The band grew out of a conversation between a Breton accordionist and a Ukrainian fiddler in a Vietnamese restaurant on Yonge Street. Mark Marczyk had just spent two years in Ukraine playing with the urban folk band Ludy Dobri while Tangi Ropars had returned to his place of birth after a lifetime of Celtic folk. They soon discovered that others, too, were craving the energy of Eastern European folk music in the streets and clubs of Toronto and joined a band calling themselves Worldly Savages.