Emerging on Matinee's roster a mere two months after they were founded, Northern Portrait's sleek, reverb-slicked sound, headed up by Stefan Larsen's melancholy caterwaul, hearkened back to the Smiths and nodded to contemporaries like the Mary Onettes and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. The band formed in Copenhagen, Denmark in the summer of 2007 (July, to be exact) with Larsen, Michael Sorenson, and Rune Reholt. Larsen and Sorenson had known each other since they were children, and had rehearsed together on and off again prior to forming Northern Portrait. The band was contacted by numerous labels within the first few weeks of creating their MySpace profile, and they were snapped up by Matinee by the end of August. Their debut on that label, the Fallen Aristocracy EP, was released in March of the following year. Another EP, Napoleon Sweetheart, was slated for release in July.