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Soltamos una carcajada anoche cuando te echaste a cantar.

Soltamos una carcajada anoche cuando te echaste a cantar.
We let out a loud laugh last night when you started singing.
From Lesson 243:Sudden actions (echarse a)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Soltamos una carcajada anoche cuando te echaste a cantar.

Why use te echaste a cantar instead of just empezaste a cantar?
The structure echarse a + infinitive is used to say someone suddenly or unexpectedly started doing something, often with a burst of emotion. While empezaste a just means you started, te echaste a paints a picture of you spontaneously bursting into song.
What does soltamos mean in this context? I thought it meant to let go.
You are right! Soltar means to let go or release. The phrase soltar una carcajada literally means to release a loud laugh. It is the natural way in Spanish to say you burst out laughing or let out a guffaw.
Since soltamos is the same in both the present and past tense, how do we know it is the past tense here?
The time marker anoche (last night) makes it clear that this happened in the past, so we know soltamos is in the preterite (simple past) tense. The other verb in the sentence, te echaste, is also in the preterite.
Why is there a te before echaste?
The phrase we are using here is reflexive: echarse a. Because you are the one who suddenly started singing, you must use the reflexive pronoun te to match the tú form of the verb (echaste).

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