Taken By Sanity, an Alternative/Indie band based out of Chestermere, has made it into the top 100, out of over 4,000 entries, in the 2019 CBC’s Searchlight contest.

CBC’s Searchlight is an annual contest, which is held to find undiscovered talent in Canada.

The band is made up of Jonah Morris on vocals and ukulele, Blaine Stillman on drums, and Blair Stillman on keyboards.

Blaine talked about how it feels being in the top 100. He said, “Its honestly a shock to us, we never even thought we would get this far already being in the top 100. There's so many talented artists across alberta; to really be a part of that is amazing.”

Blair said, “Being able to represent the area we are in, the Strathmore-Chestermere-Langdon area, it's just an amazing opportunity for us to show what our area can do.”

According to Blaine, the band decided to enter into the contest this year because they felt that they had a shot at it after entering last year.

Blaine talked about the origin of the band name. He said that the group was playing a fundraiser one night, and the host of the fundraiser asked them for their band name. Blaine said, “I actually came up with it in a Little Caesars parking lot thinking about there's this band name called Sanity, I think that's really cool. So we’re gonna call ourselves Taken By Sanity. Eventually the meaning of the band name came up afterwards.” According to Blaine, the meaning of the band name is everyone has that hobby, individual, or thing that takes you back to sanity and away from that negativity in life.

Blair talked about a future project the group is working on. He said, “We are currently working on another project, and we are hopefully releasing it in the next couple months here. We’ve been working on it for the past year and a half, so a huge project.” “We are looking forward to do more shows over the summer, we’ve applied to a bunch so we are just waiting to hear back from them.”

Blaine said that their family has been very supportive of the group, as taking on music is a full time job. He said, “It's quite intimidating to them, but they really do support us and everything.”

“As much as continuing to write, and continuing to produce our own music and everything, that's about what we really have going for us so hopefully we can start building more of a fanbase.” Said Blaine.