| Band Members | ||
| Chris Thile | – | mandolin, vocals |
| Gabe Witcher | – | fiddle, vocals |
| Noam Pikelny | – | banjo, vocals |
| Chris Eldridge | – | guitar, vocals |
| Paul Kowert | – | bass, vocals |
Their style has been described as “bluegrass instrumentation and spontaneity in the strictures of modern classical” as well as “American country-classical chamber music.”
Thile formed the band in 2006 to record the album How to Grow a Woman from the Ground. In an interview with the Nashville City Paper, Thile described the formation of the band:
We got together one night just to drop a ton of money, drink too much wine, eat steaks, and commiserate about our failed relationships. We had gotten to play together a few days before and we had said that we needed to do something musical together. With our hearts smashed to pieces, it became more urgent — our lives had gone the same way for so long. I knew I wanted to have a band with Gabe Witcher, but I didn’t know if it would be a rock ensemble, an ambitious acoustic classical thing or a bluegrass group. We played, and there was a serious, instantaneous connection. Then I knew I wanted to put together a bluegrass band — one with a lot of range, but aesthetically a bluegrass band.
Initially the band was known as The How to Grow a Band. In 2007, the band officially changed its name first to The Tensions Mountain Boys and then settled on Punch Brothers. The band’s name comes from the critical line of an earworm jingle that is the centerpiece of Mark Twain’s short story “A Literary Nightmare”. The chorus of the jingle consists of two lines, “Punch, brother, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenjare”, that are said to be the mantra of railroad conductors. What they formed was a type of group that American Songwriter magazine calls “A 21st century version of the Bluegrass Boys.”