"Boston" was released by Epic Records on August 25, 1976. Few industry insiders thought a guitar-heavy rock record could make much of a dent in the charts as disco ruled the airwaves at the time. The album broke out of Cleveland first, and the following week, it had been added at 392 stations. Had the record been unsuccessful, Scholz, then 29, planned to abandon his rock and roll dream; he still worked at Polaroid during the first few weeks of the record's success. Scholz felt pessimistic about the success until the album sold 200,000 copies. "And all of a sudden I realized I was in the music business," he told "Rolling Stone". "I got word on what the sales figures were while I was still at Polaroid full-time. It wasn't easy staying there two more weeks." Critics were kind to "Boston"; "Rolling Stone" wrote that "The group's affinity for heavy rock & roll provides a sense of dynamics that coheres magnetically with sophisticated progressive structures."