Future Islands is an American synth-pop band based in Baltimore, Maryland, comprising Gerrit Welmers (keyboards and programming), William Cashion (bass, acoustic and electric guitars), Samuel T. Herring (lyrics and vocals), and Michael Lowry (percussion).

[8][9] William Cashion started playing guitar when he was around 13, having had a couple of bands as a teenager in Raleigh,[10] where he commuted to high school from Wendell, North Carolina.

[12][8] They invited local record shop personality Adam Beeby to play rhythmic keyboards and fellow art student Kymia Nawabi for percussion and backing vocals.

[15][8] Sam Herring played Locke Ernst-Frost,[16] an arrogant narcissistic artist from Germany, Ohio, dressed in a 70s-inspired white suit with slicked-back hair, and a heavy German accent.

[18] The band quickly gained a local reputation and started touring the underground venues in the Southeast,[17] playing shows with North Carolina acts like Valient Thorr and Baltimore artists such as Height, Videohippos, OCDJ, Nuclear Power Pants, Santa Dads, Ecstatic Sunshine, Blood Baby, Ponytail[16][7] and electronic musician Dan Deacon[19][10] whom they met during a show on May 26, 2004.

When Art Lord & the Self Portraits disbanded in late 2005, its members forgot they had discussed with alt-country band The Texas Governor the possibility of touring together.

[7][24] Future Islands was formed in early 2006 to keep that commitment, with an original line-up consisting of Cashion, Herring, Welmers and Erick Murillo—bassist for The Kickass[16] —who played an electronic drum kit.

In July 2007, Future Islands recorded their debut album Wave Like Home[32] with Chester Endersby Gwazda at Backdoor Skateshop in Greenville.

London-based label Upset The Rhythm released Wave Like Home on August 25, 2008, which made sales difficult in the US due to the import costs.

[40][41] It was Double Dagger's bassist Bruce Willen who was responsible for giving the label a demo that contained early mixes of "Tin Man", "Walking Through That Door", "Long Flight" and "As I Fall".

[16][7] Future Islands began writing the rest of the album after Whartscape 2009[7] and recorded it in the band's living room[10] in the historic Marble Hill neighborhood in Baltimore, with Chester Enderby Gwazda[42] in July 2009.

In February 2010, Future Islands released through the NYC art collective Free Danger the EP The Post Office Chapel Wave[39][43] with remixes by Pictureplane, Javelin, Jones and Moss Of Aura, and collaborations with No Age and Victoria Legrand from Beach House.

The EP also included an extended version of "Tin Man", a 2007 track "Virgo Distracts" and "Awake and Dreaming" which had been written for In Evening Air but did not fit the mood of the album.

[43] Interested in expanding their sound, on July 7, 2010, the band recorded Undressed, an acoustic EP at Mobtown Studios, Baltimore for a radio broadcast.

[46] Following a year of solid touring, Future Islands recorded their third album On the Water in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, between late May and early June 2011 with producer Chester Endersby Gwazda.

Our friend Abe [Sanders] pretty much let us take over his house for ten days, and that gave us a lot of freedom to focus on writing and recording.

It featured a duet with Jenn Wasner from Wye Oak on the track "The Great Fire"[47] and the art cover was designed by Baltimore artist Elena Johnston.

Having toured for five consecutive years,[50] in 2013 Future Islands was finally able to afford taking a break from the road, to write their fourth album:[51] "We sank everything we had into [Singles].

"[52] They started writing in February 2013[50] in a rented hunting cabin in rural North Carolina, while rehearsing for the tenth anniversary of Art Lord & the Self-Portraits' first show.

[53] The band made their network television début on March 3, 2014, on The Late Show with David Letterman, performing the lead single "Seasons (Waiting on You)".

In February 2015, Future Islands wrote the single "The Chase"/"Haunted by You" and recorded it in March with producer Jim Eno at Public Hi-Fi, Austin, Texas.

In 2016, Future Islands took a break from touring and started writing their fifth album in January, in the small beach town of Avon, in the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

Future Islands' music style has been tagged as synth-pop, but the band has routinely rejected that classification, considering themselves as "post-wave",[39] by combining the romanticism of new wave with the power and drive of post-punk.

Cashion was also a big fan of The Cure and The Smashing Pumpkins, and was influenced by bassists Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order, and Kim Deal from The Pixies and The Breeders.

In Future Islands writing process, Gerrit Welmers and William Cashion develop the music which Sam Herring responds to with the lyrics.

When touring Europe as part of the Dan Deacon Ensemble supporting the album Bromst, Herring was tackled by a drunken spectator in Paris.

[83] In 2015, he tore a meniscus while doing a knee drop when opening for Morrissey at Red Rocks on July 16,[26] but the band completed the remaining four months of the Singles tour.

[7] They have performed at festivals such as Latitude, Great Escape, Primavera Sound, Glastonbury, Coachella, Øyafestivalen, Sziget, Bonnaroo, Sasquatch!, and SXSW, among others.

"[44] Kymia Nawabi made the cover art for Wave Like Home, Feathers & Hallways (single), In Evening Air, Undressed (EP), and The Far Field.

[94] As Samuel T. Herring, he has collaborated with Double Dagger, Microkingdom, Beth Jeans Houghton/Du Blonde, Gangrene, BadBadNotGood, Clams Casino and Celebration.