Yes that's why I've always done it that way. In more than 11 years of using a laptop as a playback device and WAVE files played in Win amp, I've never, ever had an issue with a song.
Mini disk was just as dependable too, but you had to make up disks with your playlist so not very flexible.
Midi with hardware was usually OK, but I had a foot controller and the biggest button was the "PANIC" button to kill stuck notes. Then there where the nights when your channels go haywire and your bass part takes up using a pan flute instead...
No, I would continue using Wave files of my backing as why would I want to even change what I've got nailed down already.
And I always have a back up laptop with everything ready to go anyways, so if the Sonar ( ? DAW) playback experiment fails me I am still a few clicks away from keeping the show going.
The other option is a midi foot controller and try and remember which patch goes with which song.
We have all this cool new technology but none is designed with live solo performers in mind. For example try and find a playback music app for your iPad or ? that stops playback after each song... Only win amp seems to be able to do this and it's now unsupported. Apparently the people who brought you Reaper designed it.