Yusaku and Aya are both originally from Kanazawa Japan and they had both previously played in other bands together. When their last band broke up, they wanted to form another band and they asked two musician friends that they had met while living in Tokyo if they were interested in starting a new band with them. Ume and Kawana joined and that's when Yucca was formed in 2003. Yusaku came up with the name by just looking through a herb dictionary. He decided on the name because it was short, easy to memorize, and it just sounded likeable. After Aya was in an accident where she broke her back she needed to take a break and that's when we asked Chujo to join us on drums. Then after Aya fully recovered she rejoined the band on keyboard and other auxiliary instruments to form what is the current line up of the band.
Yucca were inspired by a lot of the US indie bands from around the 90s like Sonic Youth, Pavement, Sea and the Cake, and also Stereolab, Pastels, New Order, etc. Also, we were probably influenced by the whole Japanese mid 90s music scene called Shibuya-kei with bands like Cornelius and many others. But, as far as the short and minimal structure of many of our songs, that's at least partially influenced by a Japanese short story Sci-Fi novelist named Shinichi Hoshi.