Saetia (pronounced SAY-shuh) is a New York City-based screamo band. While relatively unknown during their initial existence, the band is now seen as one of the most critically lauded bands of the late-1990s screamo scene.
Saetia initially formed in February 1997 when each of its members were attending New York University. Their name originates from a misspelling of the Miles Davis track "Saeta", from his album Sketches of Spain. The band had numerous members throughout its existence, with frequent changes in membership. The band's first bass player, Alex Madara, was affected by a severe allergic reaction which placed him into a coma for eight days, finally resulting in his death on December 14, 1998.
Their drummer, Greg Drudy, was the original drummer of the band Interpol prior to their current popularity. He operated the record label Level Plane, which was initially started so Saetia could release a 7-inch single to sell at shows. Other members of the band continued their musical careers in numerous outfits, some of them joining screamo bands such as Off Minor, Hot Cross and The Fiction, as well as the bands and Instruction.
The group would eventually break up in October 1999. Saetia's final, posthumous single, "Eronel" (also a title of a Thelonious Monk composition) was released under the Witching Hour label in 2000. The single contains three songs recorded by Steve Roche and mixed by Pat Kenneally. In 2001, Level Plane issued A Retrospective, a discography album that compiles every recording the band has made, including recordings taken from one of the last shows the band played at ABC No Rio.
In 2016, Secret Voice, the label of Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm, released Collected, a two-disc, 180-gram vinyl set that includes every studio recording by the group. The tracks from the ABC No Rio also saw their own release in the form of a cassette titled Live At ABC No Rio Spring 1999, which was also released in 2016 through Secret Voice.
In April 2022, Saetia, consisting of Billy Werner, Jamie Behar, Adam Marino, Colin Bartoldus, and Chris Enriquez (drummer of Spotlights, Julie Christmas and On the Might of Princes), announced via Instagram that they rehearsed for the first time in 24 years. In November 2022, they brought back Steve Roche (on drums) and new member, Tom Schlatter (on guitar) and played live at four locations in New York and Pennsylvania.
On January 3, 2025, Saetia release its first new music in over 26 years. The first release was track "Tendrils", which is the first of the three tracks from the upcoming "Tendrils EP".
According to Kerrang, Saetia "revel[ed] in melodrama to a new extreme" by taking "what emo was and dialled the aggression all the way up." He said of the band's self titled album: "Instrumentally, this is a work of total fucking chaos." He said that the screaming of Billy Werner is "sharp enough to cause lacerations."
Saetia have cited numerous bands as influences, including Born Against, Rorschach, 1.6 Band, Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Los Crudos, Merel, Sleepytime Trio, Downcast, Shotmaker, Maximillian Colby and Closure, as well as many of the bands on Bloodlink Records and Ebullition records.
Stewart Mason of AllMusic described their music as an "essential document" for fans of screamo. The band's influence has been noted in the work of La Dispute. They have been cited as an influence by Alexisonfire, Senses Fail, Thursday and Touché Amoré.