Like so many other Canadian bands, Sully’s story is one of disenchantment. Their second album, I Have Much To Report, was a gauzy, ethereal ambient pop album in the same vein as the Cocteau Twins. They found a home at Nettwerk Records, a Canadian label that has not had the best record when it comes to dealing with artists; one band they nurtured to success, only to drop them at the first sign of trouble, was the Wild Strawberries, they of the moderate radio hits “Heroine” and “I Don’t Wanna Think About It.” I Have Much To Report didn’t even get that far; with its dark, vaguely industrial tendencies, Nettwerk couldn’t figure out how to market the album and dropped the band instead.

Just like the Wild Strawberries, Sully regrouped and released their next album without Nettwerk’s help. They moved to Maplemusic (before its partnership-cum-merger with Universal Canada) and put out Bright Lights, which chucked some of the previous album’s ambient-soup tendencies in favour of more hooks and a brighter (…) sound. Bright Lights still has a certain blissed-out quality to it, but songs like “Half Of Once” don’t fade into the background as they might have on previous albums.

Since Bright Lights, Sully have found themselves in limbo; they’ve played shows here and there, most recently at the Celebrate Toronto street festival in 2002. There’s been no word on a new album, though, and the band’s site domain recently expired, leaving the question of whether Sully is still a going concern.