No individual by the name of Leslie Spit exists; the moniker instead references a harbor-front landmark in the band’s native Toronto, Ontario. The unconventional spelling of “Treeo” may have served as a lighthearted scatological joke rooted in the trio’s foundation—vocalist Laura Hubert, guitarist Pat Langer, and their dog Tag, who performed onstage with them and was even credited as manager and record-label president. Emerging in 1988, the Leslie Spit Treeo assembled when Hubert, Langer, Tag, acoustic guitarist Jack Nicholsen, bassist Frank Randazzo, and drummer Graeme Kirkland merged out of several disbanded Toronto rock, folk, and jazz ensembles. After busking on city streets, indie filmmaker Bruce McDonald cast them in a key scene of his debut feature Road Kill and placed their music prominently on its soundtrack, prompting EMI Music Canada to sign the group and issue their debut album, Don’t Cry Too Hard, in 1990.
Record-company meddling made 1992’s Book of Rejection a fraught recording, after which the band entered prolonged legal negotiations to exit the EMI contract; during this period Nicholsen and the remaining members departed, leaving only Hubert, Langer, and Tag. Shortening their name to the Spits—the shorthand most fans already used—they spent six months on a remote northern Ontario Native American reservation collaborating with McDonald on his 1993 film Dance Me Outside. Once filming concluded, Hubert and Langer self-financed their next release, Hell’s Kitchen, titled after a beloved Kensington Market eatery; issued under the Spits name in 1994, the album was re-pressed the following year under the original Leslie Spit Treeo banner after early sales proved modest.
For the subsequent project Hubert and Langer assembled a two-disc set that freely mixed live recordings, fresh studio tracks, chosen covers, and playful psychedelic experiments, framing the whole with a narrative in which McDonald’s frequent collaborator Don McKellar appears as the scheming head of Monee Records manipulating the chipmunk-voiced act the Spitkins. The thinly veiled allegory of their EMI ordeal lent cohesion to the disparate material; the album was christened Chocolate Chip Cookies after the fable’s central image and packaged in a plain white paper bag bearing a label that deliberately echoed Christie's Cookies, the Canadian arm of Nabisco. A lawsuit ensued, culminating in a well-publicized public incineration of unsold sleeves outside Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street and a subsequent reissue in standard packaging.
Accompanied by a fresh roster of supporting players, Hubert, Langer, and Tag toured through 1997 and 1998 while announcing plans for a rock opera; before any further work materialized, however, the longtime couple Hubert and Langer separated. Hubert subsequently partnered with jazz pianist Peter Hill to adopt a torch-singer persona, releasing her debut solo album, My Girlish Ways, in 2001.
