Tractorbeam started as a Disco Biscuits side project, debuting at a Chicago show on April 20, 2007, with the same four members — Marc Brownstein, Jon Gutwillig, Allen Aucoin, and Aron Magner — playing instrumental versions of their own songs and covers rather than the band's usual vocal-forward sets.
It stayed rare for more than a decade: only nine shows across the eleven years after that Chicago debut, treated more as a creative outlet than a touring priority.
The project changed shape entirely in October 2019, when all four members started performing live house and disco songs synced through Ableton Live on laptops rather than their usual instruments — a genuine format reinvention for a band whose original side project had nothing to do with house music at all, and one that's seen a real resurgence as recently as 2025.