What people traditionally think of when you say "stain" is not necessarily an accurate depiction of whats out there nowadays. True their are very thin "stains" but like mentioned there are stains which are as thick as paint. A stain vs. a paint is meant to uniformly color the wood grainwhile highlighting wood textures. True stain does not typically last as long as a paint but paint will with each layer fill in some of the nature look of wood, in this case probably cedar, until years/coats later its hard to tell its what was originally on there.