LAUNDRY DAY started the way most bands start, in high school after meeting guys who shared a passion for making music.

All New York Natives, singers Sawyer Nunes and Jude Ciulla, guitarist Henry Weingartner, drummer Etai Abramovich and bassist Henry Pearl are currently the creative minds that makeup LAUNDRY DAY, and these talented, young musicians’ energy and stage presence is just as big and bold as their all-caps band name.

Though LAUNDRY DAY formed recently in 2017, they’ve already been making big career moves, like performing at Lollapalooza, for example. Though the band is loyal to their hometown of Manhattan, the band said they’re big fans of Chicago (and its deep-dish pizza).

“We love it. We love Chicago,” said Pearl.

“It’s a big festival, probably the biggest one we’ve been to I think,” said Nunes about Lolla.

Lolla is Chicago’s first big event since the COVID-19 pandemic. Though for many, getting back into the groove of things post-pandemic might be difficult, Ciulla said being at Lolla almost felt like nothing had changed.

“When we got here, it kind of felt like everybody was like frozen in their jerseys and they just crop tops and then they just unfroze and got ready,” Ciulla said. “Everyone was ready to get back out and be at a festival.”

The band performed Saturday, July 31, on the Grubhub Stage at 12:50 p.m., a golden time and spot at Lollapalooza, which is super impressive for a first-time Lolla performer. Ciulla appeared on stage with a Gryffindor robe (though he says he’s actually a Hufflepuff), and they were immediately greeted with applause and loud screams of the members’ names.

“There were honestly more people than we thought were gonna be there,” said Abramovich.

“We didn’t really know what to expect to be honest. We kind of went up there with blind fate,” said Nunes. “And it happened that there were a lot of people who knew the words, and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ They were singing them back to us.”

This was a pleasant surprise to LAUNDRY DAY, but fans in the crowd didn’t seem surprised by the number of people who showed up for the set. Before the show, strangers became friends by bonding over who their favorite member was or what LAUNDRY DAY song was their favorite. Fans chose to be at LAUNDRY DAY’s set, and the band says that was a really welcoming experience to have at Lolla.

“Being at a festival specifically, like you just have no idea what people are gonna show up so, and it’s like kind of out of your control, because everyone’s gotta wake up on their own time and be there when they want to be there, and it’s just cool to see that many people,” Ciulla said. “We were early enough where I think everyone actively made the choice to be there this early and show up for us. That’s pretty awesome.”

LAUNDRY DAY’s Lolla performance made it clear that they know how to perform, but every artist has their influences, and LAUNDRY DAY is no exception. In the past, they’ve noted Tyler, the Creator and BROCKHAMPTON as artists they admire.

But the band says that now, they’ve gotten to a point where they don’t really feel like they need those outside influences anymore.

“We almost, in a good way, don’t look up to them as much because they’ve kind of let us be in a place, without them even knowing, where we feel comfortable enough with what we do,” Ciulla said. “I think they’ve kind of built us up to the point where we are now to just be like, we’re LAUNDRY DAY. This is who we are, and we get to be ourselves. Nobody else can really do what we do, which is what we love most about them, so thank you to them.”

Abramovich added that they didn’t necessarily look up to those artists musically, since LAUNDRY DAY’s style is quite different from Tyler and BROCKHAMPTON, but rather they look up to their attitudes and the way they approach the music-making process. And now they’ve been able to take what they’ve learned from those artists and make their own music.

Besides Tyler and BROCKHAMPTON, the band has also picked up on what they learned from artists like The 1975 and Clairo, both artists LAUNDRY DAY opened for in 2019.

Nunes said that they learned many lessons from those artists that you can’t learn anywhere else, one of them being how to treat not only the smaller acts but everyone around you as well. He also said he learned the importance of creating a solid team.

“I would say both of those artists have such a strong team around them, and you can tell there’s a reason why they cultivated that and why they’re all sticking together,” Nunes said. “I think that they made a great job of making us feel welcome, and we feel more like friends than anything, like more than collaborators.”

But now LAUNDRY DAY is the opening act at Lolla, though they said they remember when they were enjoying festivals as festivalgoers and didn’t yet have the artist wristband. Though they’re performers now, the band said they were still planning on seeing other artists like they used to.

“We just decided to run around and see everyone, just like we were used to back when we were running around with GA passes, and now we’re just lucky enough to play,” Nunes said.

LAUNDRY DAY is definitely a band to keep an eye on. They said their fourth album is coming and that it sounds really good, so stay tuned for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if LAUNDRY DAY appears on future Lolla lineups in a bigger font size or even as a headliner.