Folks first formed in 2013 when former
Galileo Galilei members Fumito Iwai and Kazumasa Noguchi moved back to their birthplace of Hokkaido to start a band, and officially became a unit in January 2013. Iwai and Noguchi asked former Guild member Yoshitomo Kobayashi to join their band, and they moved to
Sapporo, renting a house with Iwai's older brother Katsutoshi Iwai and his friend Masatsugu Takahashi, who also had a separate band. All five people practised music in their own rooms, but because Katsutoshi Iwai's room was a Japanese style room, the other band members could hear him through the thin
shōji walls. In late 2013, Fumito Iwai heard his brother creating the song "River," and liked it so much he asked to arrange the song. All the house-mates loved the completed song, and decided to merge their two bands to create Folks. == Writing and production ==