For many, the high school days of playing in a garage band have been long abandoned — but not for Zachary Roth, Christian Flannery and Steven Lobkovich. The three have an interest in blues-based music, and have formed their own band called Forgotten Tropics.

With Roth as singer and guitarist, Flannery as bassist and Lobkovich as drummer, the three look forward to making it in the music industry and the good times on the way.

Roth and Flannery, both sophomores at DePaul, met in a jazz history class, and Lobkovich is a sophomore at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Roth and Lobovich went to the same high school in the suburbs and played in a band together. That band first helped them develop their musical skills and mess around with time signatures.

Now, the three bandmates live together in Lakeview, where they practice music and concert sets out of their garage. They have even received some compliments from neighbors in the past.

Fitting practice into a college schedule isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but the band makes it work. All three hope to some day make a living in music performance and work towards that goal as best they can.

Forgotten Tropics writes their own modern indie rock music, with a heavy blues twist on it.

“Chicago definitely has an influence on our sound,” Flannery said. “Chicago has a huge blues scene, it’s had that for many years, and I think you definitely pick up on it. It’s one thing everyone starts out on, doing blues music.”

A seemingly forgotten genre of music for college students more interested in rock and hip-hop, the blues play a prominent role in Chicago, as well as in the making of other music genres.

The blues instrumentation and rhythm have influenced numerous artists within other genres including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder.

The Chicago B.L.U.E.S. Bar on North Halsted is one such space that lets the public dip their toes into the water of the famous Chicago blues scene.

Roth is personally influenced by many of the classic blues and rock guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. He himself only first picked up a guitar about three years ago.

“I was playing a lot of sports until I saw John Frusciante’s solo (for Red Hot Chili Peppers),” Roth said. “Then after that I got a guitar two days later. I was 16.”

Although all three musicians seem to have a clear idea of their style and interests, their individual styles bring something unique to the band.

“We’re always trying to influence each other. We’ll be watching some random gypsy jazz guitar player and be like ‘hey, check this out.’ So we kind of take influence from everything that we watch,” Flannery said.

As Forgotten Tropics finds their footing in the modern world of music, they work to combine their own interests and influences into a coherent work.

The band, after meeting and forming in winter of 2014, has released an EP on Spotify, titled “Ashland Avenue.” The EP was recorded in Kingsize Sound Labs with Mike Hagler, whom Roth found by simply asking around at music stores when purchasing some guitar pedals.

Forgotten Tropics is planning on releasing their debut album soon, but they also are putting an emphasis on playing live music for people in as many locations as they can.

The struggle with these live shows is their young age; many blues venues in Chicago have 21+ shows, and while some venues will let the band perform with X’s on their hands, others are not so willing. Despite this, the band has made their impact and have big plans for their future.

The band is currently preparing to put their debut album out through Emphasis Entertainment Group and Baja Illinois Records, a record label that promotes offbeat music from the Chicago area. Their album will be out Dec. 1.