THE NATIONAL formed in 1999, when five friends from Cincinnati, Ohio met again after all of them had relocated to Brooklyn, NY. For years, the band had received critical praise but it wasn't until 2005's Alligator that a wider audience finally discovered them. Alligator ended up in the higher echelons of scores of year-end critics' lists and the band found themselves selling out large venues across Europe, the UK and the US.
