, who formed it in late 2004 in San Francisco after relocating there from Athens, Georgia, in 2003.
was inspired to put the group together by a song he had written while a member of
, "Never Gonna Touch the Ground." To jam on the song, he invited a wide range of friends to rehearse, resulting in an ever-shifting personnel of upwards of 15 musicians and singers at a time, performing locally. The
band).
In April 2005,
Still Flyin' organized the Mind Zap Festival at McLaren Park in San Francisco, after which the band embarked on a West Coast tour opening for
Architecture in Helsinki. Antenna Farm Records signed
Still Flyin' and released the group's debut EP (or "EJ," as the label put it, for "extended jam"),
Time Wrinkle, on June 13, 2006. A second EP,
Za Cloud, followed on April 24, 2007. In 2008 the band released its first album, Never Gonna Touch the Ground, for the Ernest Jenning label. It found them branching out into more traditional indie pop along with reggae and jam band influences. By the time of the 2010 EP A Party in Motion, the band pared down its lineup to a core group led by
Rawls and ditched all the reggae and Dead in favor of a synthy, indie pop sound with strong elements of '80s pop and '70s German rock running through it. The 2012 album by
Still Flyin', On a Bedroom Wall, retained this approach and refined it, making for their best album to date.
–
William Ruhlmann, Rovi