Deaf Havana

Deaf Havana's story begins in the classrooms of Smithdon High School, where Ryan Mellor, James Veck-Gilodi and Lee Wilson were already playing together in local bands. By 2005, with Tom Ogden and Sebastian Spitz alongside them at the King's Lynn campus of The College of West Anglia, the alternative rock group had a name, coined by Spitz and carrying no literal meaning. Their roots in Hunstanton and King's Lynn, on the Norfolk coast, surface again later in a song called "Hunstanton Pier".

A demo, White Lines But No Camera, was recorded in August 2006, and the debut EP Evangeline followed. In 2008 they signed to Wolf at Your Door Records for one EP and two albums. It's Called the Easy Life, mixed by Matt O'Grady, arrived that October to strong reviews and led to a January 2009 UK tour with We Are the Ocean and The Urgency. Meet Me Halfway, at Least, produced by O'Grady, came out on 5 October 2009, spawning "Friends Like These" and "Nicotine and Alcohol Saved My Life". Mellor left in May 2010 for personal reasons, and the band carried on as a four-piece. Fools and Worthless Liars, again with O'Grady, was next.