Łzy: The Band That Split into Łzy and Łzy. From a Parish Hall in Pszów to the Battle Over the Name

Today, the same name refers to two different bands, two different stories and two completely different views on who the “real Łzy” actually are. One side has the paperwork, the EU trademark and the domain. On the other side, there is Adam Konkol, his songs and a large part of the fanbase who still see him as the person who built the foundations of the band.

To understand what happened, let’s go back to the beginning.

How Łzy came together

Łzy were born in Upper Silesia, in Pszów. At first, everything revolved around Adam Konkol, a drum kit found in a parish hall and a few of his friends who simply wanted to play something. Darek Pieczka, Michał Broża and the first rehearsals all belong to this early period, before the band had its recognisable name.

The band officially started in 1996 as a Silesian pop-rock group. The original line-up included Adam Konkol, Arkadiusz Dzierżawa, Robert Szymański and Andrzej Ciszewski. Bożena Tront initially took over on vocals, but soon someone appeared who would change everything. Dawid Krzykała told Adam that he knew a girl who should sing in Łzy. That girl was Anna Wyszkoni.

The guys met Ania in a restaurant, listened to a cassette featuring her cover of “Zanim zrozumiesz”, and Konkol later recalled that he decided she should become the band’s voice. That was the beginning of the period most of us remember most clearly, Łzy with Anna Wyszkoni on vocals.

The first album, Słońce, was released at the end of 1998. The band recorded it over ten months at Sonus Studio in Łomianki, using their own money and without the backing of a major record label. It was not yet a nationwide craze, but it was already clear that something was happening, something that could reach beyond Silesia.

W związku z samotnością and the explosion of “Agnieszka”

The real turning point came with the second album, W związku z samotnością. Released in 2000 and reissued by Pomaton EMI a year later, it earned the band platinum status and brought them into the national mainstream.

This was the album that featured “Agnieszka już dawno…” and “Narcyz się nazywam”. “Agnieszka” was recorded in June 2000 and released as a single on 22 January 2001. Differences of opinion were already beginning to appear in the songwriting credits, but most people agree on one thing: this song turned Łzy into a band known across the entire country.

Konkol has always stressed that he wrote the lyrics and composed the melody for “Agnieszka”, and that he still has the original handwritten lyrics. Other band members listed in the song’s credits maintain that Łzy’s songs were created through the collaboration of the entire group. The dispute over authorship continues to this day, but one fact remains: it was Wyszkoni who gave the song its voice, and for many people her version is still the definitive one.

It is also important to mention that after leaving the band, Ania did not want to return to the Łzy repertoire for a long time. She explained that she needed to distance herself from that period and that she had “grown out of those songs”. Konkol, on the other hand, claims that she promised him she would not perform his songs at her solo concerts, and that when she eventually returned to them, he saw it as breaking her word. That is Adam’s perspective, but it is worth mentioning because it shows how personal these songs became for everyone involved.

Łzy as a touring band, not just a singles act

Łzy were never a “two hits and we’re done” kind of project. In its official materials, the current band says that over almost three decades they have played more than 1,250 to 1,300 concerts in Poland and abroad, including tours of the United States, appearances at major festivals such as Pol’and’Rock, as well as numerous shows in large arenas and local cultural centres.

The band’s catalogue includes nine studio albums. At least two of them, W związku z samotnością and Nie czekaj na jutro, achieved platinum status. That is an impressive achievement for a Polish pop-rock band that began its journey in the small town of Pszów.

There have also been collaborations and new versions of older songs. Anna Wyszkoni recorded “Agnieszka” as a duet with Janusz Walczuk, and during her anniversary concerts in 2026 she returned to several Łzy songs, despite her conflict with Konkol. The current Łzy have also released anniversary box sets featuring guests from other areas of the music world.

Anna Wyszkoni leaves and Sara Chmiel joins

In 2010, Anna Wyszkoni left Łzy after 14 years as the band’s vocalist. For a long time, she did not perform the band’s songs at all, explaining that she needed to close that chapter and process the emotions connected with her departure.

Sara Chmiel took Wyszkoni’s place. Since 2011, her voice has been the face of Łzy, and with her the band continued recording albums and playing concerts. In interviews, Chmiel has said directly that Łzy have lasted so long because they have “a tough behind”, they keep playing constantly and their energy does not disappear after a few seasons.

With Sara, Łzy entered another chapter, right up until the split.

Adam Konkol’s health

Adam Konkol has lived with a congenital heart defect and Eisenmenger syndrome since childhood, a serious condition involving pulmonary hypertension. In interviews, he has said that there were times when he stood behind the speakers and “spat blood” during concerts, and that the illness has shaped much of his life.

In 2024, he announced that he had been diagnosed with malignant lung cancer. Because of his heart condition, doctors could not simply “cut out part of the lung” or use standard chemotherapy, so they had to look for other forms of treatment. In 2025, Konkol revealed that he had suffered a stroke, after which he temporarily lost his sight and speech, became partially paralysed and had to fight to regain the use of the hand he had played with for years.

This cannot simply be ignored. It is a real and documented part of his recent life, and regardless of which side of the dispute someone supports, it is worth remembering that behind all these statements is a man who has come close to death several times.

Konkol claims that it was precisely during the period when his health problems became more serious that his former bandmates wanted to push him aside, replace the line-up and take over the band’s brand, which he saw as a low blow. The other side denies this, saying that they knew about Adam’s health, but that in their view the split was caused by disputes over the terms of cooperation, contracts, rights to the name and the band’s direction, not by any attempt to exploit his health problems.

A split that did not come from one argument

The conflict was not caused by one argument in a tour van. It had been building for years. Konkol has recalled that the final period of his cooperation with Wyszkoni was “one of the worst times in his life”, that they had separate dressing rooms and barely communicated. Later, disputes emerged over the performance of the old hits, royalties and who was building their position on the band’s earlier songs.

In 2021, everything finally became public. Konkol announced that he was replacing the band’s entire line-up, which the other side saw as an attempt to remove them from a project they had helped build over many years. In response, the musicians performing with Sara published their own statements and documents, claiming that Adam had resigned from the band himself in May 2021, failed to appear at an online concert and later informed them of his departure in a written statement.

From a listener’s perspective, the situation looks like this:

On one side, there are Łzy with Sara Chmiel-Gromala, Arkadiusz Dzierżawa and the rest of the long-standing line-up, who claim that they simply continued working after the founder’s departure.

On the other side, there are Łzy Adam Konkol, built around the belief that without the creator of the biggest hits and the person who came up with the name, there are no “real Łzy”.

There is also the conflict with Anna Wyszkoni over her performance of “Agnieszka” and other Łzy songs at her solo concerts. Konkol says he does not agree with “Agnieszka” keeping her on the music market and that he wants to remove part of her rights at ZAiKS. Wyszkoni responds that she was the original voice of those songs, considers herself a co-creator of their success and has every right to return to them sentimentally during her concerts.

Trademark, domain and two biographies

In 2025, Łzy with Sara announced that the Polish Patent Office had rejected an opposition from a former band member concerning the registration of the “Łzy” trademarks. According to the decision, the application did not violate his personal rights, and a person who voluntarily left the band could not block the continuation of the group’s activities.

In July 2026, the line-up with Sara announced another development: the name “ŁZY” had been registered as a European Union word trademark under number 019322256, with Arkadiusz Dzierżawa listed as the owner. Their statements included the sentence, “There is only one Łzy”, and the musicians stressed that they had the exclusive right to use the name in music, concerts and publishing.

Konkol responded with his own statement, writing that for him the name Łzy was not simply an entry in a register, but thousands of concerts, hundreds of songs, millions of memories and his entire adult life. He announced that he would appeal the decision and that the story was “not over yet”.

If you want to explore this story in greater depth, it is worth reading the two biographies:

• The biography of Łzy on lzy.pl, written from the perspective of the line-up with Sara.

• The history of Łzy on lzyofficial.pl, told by Adam Konkol, where he describes the band’s beginnings, its line-ups, his health, the band’s achievements and his own version of the split.
  

This article is not sponsored in any way. Nobody paid us to recommend these biographies. I simply believe that if someone genuinely wants to understand this conflict, it is worth reading both sides before forming their own opinion.

In the end, Masuria, cheap wine and “Agnieszka”

For me, Łzy are above all those moments that many of us probably remember in a similar way. Holidays in Masuria, cheap wine on a jetty, a guitar, a few chords that everyone knew by heart and everyone singing along to “Agnieszka już dawno tutaj nie mieszka”. Beautiful times.

And maybe that is exactly why I would love for this conflict to end one day. So that, sometime and somewhere, we could once again hear Łzy in their full, original line-up, on one stage, with one setlist and without another statement being released the next day.

For now, we have two versions of Łzy, two sets of arguments and memories that nobody can take away from us. And whenever “Agnieszka” comes on again, I will still think first of Masuria, youth and that moment when we sang the chorus and felt that life was simple, even if it really was not.