Janet Weiss had drummed simultaneously for both Quasi and Sleater-Kinney throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, afterwards contributing to Bright Eyes, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and Conor Oberst albums.

She said that she had called together her friends a year ago and tried to form a band: Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so WILD FLAG was not a sure thing, it was a "maybe," a "possibility."

But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts, not four disparate puzzle pieces trying to make sense of the other, but a cohesive and dynamic whole.A Facebook page was soon put up with very little information about the band.

Their side project band the Spells released one EP, The Age of Backwards, on K Records in 1999, and played a single live show in Olympia.

[2] The first Wild Flag single, "Future Crimes" backed with "Glass Tambourine", was released on Record Store Day 2011.

The band was chosen by Les Savy Fav to perform at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival that they co-curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England.