In 1986 Rickard Karlsson and Magnus Jönsson started a band called Avanti in the city of Ystad, Sweden. Later the same year Fredrik Bergman joined the group, and Etage Neun was formed. They bought a few keyboards and started to write songs. For them, the role model at the time was mainly Depeche Mode. In the middle of the Cold War, the lyrics were often dark, about human conflicts and the nuclear threat. They did their first live show in the summer of 87 and in May 88 they released their first tape, “War and Emotions”. A couple of gigs in the south of Sweden followed and in 1990 they released a second tape entitled “From the Cradle to the Grave”. Then the band was put on hold due to military service and studies until 1997 when they got back together to continue where they left off.
In 1998 they created the compilation cdr “One” that they would sell from their website, containing songs from the two previous cassettes as well as two new songs. but then the project was put on hold again until 2008, when one of the members discovered that someone asked around for “One” at various forums on the internet. They were also told that many people out there wanted their songs. Then they got the idea to upload some of their old songs to Myspace. The response they got inspired them to start writing new songs, which they also uploaded to Myspace and Facebook.
In 2011 the new songs were released on the album “In my Place”, and the band performed live for the first time in 21 years. Since then they have released a couple of singles, an EP, and a second album “This too shall pass” which came out in 2017, as well as doing a number of gigs. In 2013 Rickard left the group and Magnus & Fredrik continued as a duo, but they were joined in 2017 by Mattias Ottosson on keys / guitar. 2020 started out with the band being invited to perform at Springfest festival in Kharagpur, India in January, just before the corona hit the world. They are now working on new material, which will be released 2020/2021.
