A band is a semigroup consisting of idempotents. It is proved that for any field K and any band S with finitely many components, the semigroup algebra K [S] can be embedded in upper triangular matrices over a commutative K-algebra. The proof of a theorem of Malcev [4, Theorem 10] on embeddability of algebras into matrix algebras over a field is corrected and it is proved that if S = F ∪ E is a band with two components E, F such that F is an ideal of S and E is finite, then S is a linear semigroup. Certain sufficient conditions for linearity of a band S, expressed in terms of annihilators associated to S, are also obtained.