The Box is a Canadian New Wave group from Montreal. Founded in 1981, they achieved commercial success in Canada, recording four charting albums and 10 charting singles between 1984 and 1990.
The group broke up in 1992, but a new lineup of the band was founded in 2002. This iteration of the group has released two further albums.
The band was formed in 1981 by Jean-Marc Pisapia, an early member of Men Without Hats. He recruited guitarist Guy Florent and bassist Jean-Pierre Brie for the band, who were originally known as Checkpoint Charlie before settling on the name The Box.
The band's first single attracted the attention of Montreal radio station CKOI-FM, leading to a deal with Alert Records. Also that year, Pisapia's brother Guy joined the band on keyboards.
Their debut album, The Box, was released in 1984 and produced the hit singles "Must I Always Remember" and "Walk Away". Drummer Sylvain Coutu joined the band for its supporting tour, but was replaced by Pierre Taillefer before the band's next album. Florent also left the band, and was replaced by Claude Thibeault.
In 1985, The Box released All The Time, All The Time, All The Time. That album, which included backing vocals by Sass Jordan and Marie Carmen, produced the hit singles "My Dreams of You" and the band's most famous song, "L'Affaire Dumoutier (Say to Me)". The band won the 1985 Félix Award for group of the year, and were nominated for the Juno Award for most promising group.
1987's Closer Together was the band's most commercially successful album. Featuring the hit singles "Ordinary People", "Closer Together" and "Crying Out Loud for Love", the album was certified platinum. Backing vocals on the album were provided by Jordan and Martine St. Clair.
After touring for more than eighteen months, the band took six months off to recover before returning with 1990's The Pleasure and the Pain. That album was a commercial disappointment, and The Box disbanded in 1992 after releasing the greatest hits compilation A Decade of Box Music. (A subsequent hits compilation, Always in Touch With You, was issued in 2003.)
Pisapia released a solo album, John of Mark, in 1995. He subsequently revived The Box with a new lineup in 2002. This version of The Box had a decidedly more prog-rock orientation that the original incarnation of the band.
In 2005 the band released Black Dog There, its first new album in fifteen years. This was followed up by the 2009 album D'Apres Le Horla De Maupassant, the first Box album sung entirely in French.
