You demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding.
You never created an instance of SimpleClass at all, because you didn't call it.
for count in xrange(4):
x = SimpleClass()
x.attr = count
simplelist.append(x)
Or, if you let the class take parameters, instead, you can use a list comprehension.
simplelist = [SimpleClass(count) for count in xrange(4)]
lang-py