$LOTHBOI talks growing up Sikh, battling the sin of stagnation and shedding the mundane
Jasmine Garcha (she/her) // Arts and Culture Editor
Jasmine Garcha (she/her) // Illustrator
Sloth*, professionally known as $LOTHBOI, is an artistic creator based out of Vancouver, B.C. Leading his life with the philosophy of creation for creation’s sake, he’s ventured into several avenues of creative expression. “I create to survive,” Sloth says, explaining that although some may choose to call him a musician, his career goes beyond this title and he wishes, “to create in every way possible.”
Everything Sloth creates stems from his desire to spread a message. “Even though the flesh is mundane, my path is divine,” Sloth says, noting that he strives to show the world divinity through kindness and creation. The mundane aspects of life—like his chores and his cats—he keeps private. He says his most meaningful lyrics are about, “kindness for kindness sake, creation for creation’s sake, forever evolving, endless love,” referring to these ideas as, “the pillars of Sloth.” These messages were acquired through deep self-reflection and meditation, and now serve as the basis for all his creations.
Sloth’s navigation of divinity and identity started young as a Western-born Punjabi growing up in Surrey. “I was definitely a bit of an outcast in the Sikh community,” Sloth says, “And it’s just Sikhs hating Sikhs because they weren’t—I wasn’t—Sikh enough.” Referring to his experience as an outcast along with his peers’ experience grappling with their identity, he comments, “I feel like there’s a lot of survival mode for Sikhs.”
Ostracization from within the community coupled with external racism and hatred led Sloth to turn away from his culture until his adult years. He describes his rediscovery of, “what it really means to be Sikh, to be a warrior and to just preach peace,” explaining that although he may not consider himself a follower of the Sikh religion, he is Sikh by his roots, having grown up attending the gurdwara, the Sikh temple.
Sloth notes that the gurdwara is now his favourite place to meditate, expressing a desire to attend soon. This is a testament to him reclaiming his culture, as well as a desire for karah prasad, a food given at gurdwaras as a holy offering.
“I fucking love prasad,” he says. Upon learning that some gurdwaras have the distributors wear gloves now, Sloth says, “I like the mans handling it. If he’s wearing gloves, take that off.” He also mentions that he used to rub the prasad’s oily residue on the carpets in the gurdwara after eating, but began rubbing it into his hands like those around him as an adult.
Another safe space is the train tracks he would visit growing up. “A lot of inspiration was under bridges getting drunk,” he says smiling, then adds, “which is unhealthy.” He notes that this is when he discovered creational therapy. “The first art form I ever enjoyed was graffiti,” he says. This passion, discovered in his late teen years, led to him creating more and he began making music during university where he studied programming.
Sloth says he grew up, “anti-art and hyper-logic,” participating in math competitions and robotics. “The things I liked to do just happened to line up with what was conventionally good for me,” he says, explaining that he even avoided art classes in high school, opting for band instead. In band class, Sloth played the clarinet. “I shred that shit,” he says, continuing, “I be Squidward I.R.L.”
His anti-art and hyper-logical path changed upon discovering creational therapy by the train tracks. Although he didn’t pursue a career in programming, Sloth used his skills to develop his online portal slothboi.art and views programming as, “the foundation for digital creation.” He mentions the existence of small, clickable easter eggs throughout the website, one even leading to a video explaining how he created the site. He expressed an open-source philosophy similar to that of the old-school ‘hacker ethic’ among programmers.
Another of Sloth’s endeavours was to create an all-inclusive collective of creatives, which led to the rebirth of Filthy Cult. Filthy Cult was originally a clothing brand founded in 2011 by Trevor Derocher and Chirchboi. In a tragic loss, Derocher passed away 22 days after his 22nd birthday. Chirch kept the clothing brand in production for the next decade.
When Sloth approached Chirch with his idea of an all-inclusive collective, the name Filthy Cult was given new life, reborn on February 22nd, 2022. 22 became the cult’s number in honour of its founding member Derocher and continues to hold spiritual significance for its members.
In 2024, Sloth and Chirch released a cult magazine on the cult’s two-year anniversary. Sloth has a love for reading and wishes to write a book someday; in the meantime, the zine provided a shorter-term project. He did the printing and binding in his home studio, where a lot of technology finds its home. “I wired a lot of it together from scratch,” he says, explaining that his love for technology comes from a desire to be involved in every aspect of the creative process. “I love it,” he says, “So, why would I outsource it?”
Sloth shares his goals for 2025, listing, “I want to be more present and aware. I want to show more of myself to the world through art. I want to travel and see my friends more. I want to question things more. I want to shed the mundane as much as I can.”
Sloth can be found on Instagram @slothboi.art, which documents his creative ventures. Filthy Cult can be found on Instagram @filthy.cult
*Sloth prefers to be known by his pseudonym