Adding another feature request to gain visibility again to this needed enhancement.
Our features board contains a combination of in-progress, scheduled and further out tentative / aspirational releases. We continually forget to change the release status as we start work on the features within a release. Jira has this same problem, and you do not want to be like Jira.
Here are the stories you said are unlikely to implement, all asking for the same enhancement.
We also have a need for this request ... either as a badge at the top of the release column, and/or even cooler would be to be able to customize a release column's background color based on the release status.
Thanks for bringing this older idea to our attention.
Your use case does make sense and we would like to continue to monitor the idea for community feedback.