The Spinto Band was originally formed as recording project by high school students in Wilmington, Delaware in the late 1990s. Frontman Nick Krill describes the early years of the band: "Every other band we knew back then would play in their garage and do the live thing. They’d do a bunch of concerts, then go, ‘Oh man, we’ve gotta record now?’ But we just had this crap in the basement and all we’d do was record, so we had 20 90-minute tapes full of junk before we played our first show."

After several releases on the band's own Spintonic label, the band released its proper debut album, Nice and Nicely Done, on Bar/None Records in 2006. The song "Oh, Mandy" was released as a single and the group performed the first installment of filmmaker Vincent Moon's now-popular Take-Away Shows.
In 2008, the band signed to Park the Van Records and released its second proper full length album Moonwink. The group promoted the album with a series of humorous videos on YouTube. Preorders of the album were accompanied with a 7-inch single that coupled the band original "Franco Prussian" with a cover of the Motors 1978 UK hit "Airport."

The following year, the band released an EP titled "Slim and Slender." The four-song release contained three original songs and a cover of the 1939 South American hit "Brazil."