unsurprisingly samplers are best geared towards sampling. if you think old samplers aren't that creative as tools, I would have to disagree. in many ways they are more creative imo. They make you manipulate the Audio itself to make effects and not rely on plug-in FX processors. often this turns out really well, 9 times out of 10.
Madonna's Ray of Light was made using 2 Akai 3200 XL.
a lot of the most interesting sounds in that work are the Akai Filter resonances making the percussion Ring.
and Tricky used an ONLY an S1000 and creative use of sampling.
to the OP's Q. with 8 tracks you only have a few options I guess.
I would record 4 tracks. then you can Mix (ANY one) through the desk and bounce it to a new track.
so under that condition, you could bounce
TRK1 to TRK4
TRK5 to TRK8
if you want to EQ and effect TRK4 (again) you could then bounce that back and overwrite the original TRK1.
so that scheme is parallel. you always know TRK5 (must) go to TRK8 &
TRK8 (must) go to TRK5. That scheme has a certain amount of Logic to it. unless you have a SMPTE code to account for. then you should maybe think about 3 Tracks X2 to go through for the creative stage.
I'm sure there are a few Logical schemes. I would actually like to hear some more. Limitations always force the use of interesting patterns.