Our Lady Peace Biography

news-detailsOur Lady Peace were formed in 1992. Vocalist Raine Maida met guitarist Mike Turner when they studied in the University of Toronto via a "musicians wanted" ad placed by Mike on local paper, Now Magazine. The two then formed a band called As If with Jim Newell playing drums and a friend of Mike Turner's, Paul Martin, playing bass.

They played a number of gigs in Oshawa, singing a mix of original and cover materials. Unfortunately, Paul departed and that matter made the band outing another "musicians wanted" ad for a replacement. They then accepted Chris Eacrett, a business student at Ryerson University, as their bass player.

To better reflect the new musical direction, they changed their band's name to Our Lady Peace. When they started to record their debut album "Naveed", Jim left the band. Once again for the third time, a "musicians wanted" ad was outed and 17-year-old Jeremy Taggart was recruited.

In 1994, their first album was done and dropped via Columbia Records. "Even that was lucky. Initially, our U.S. label Relativity serviced it on cassette, and through an oversight forgot the Do Not Broadcast title on the promotional copy. Radio stations were so hyped they started playing the cassette on the air. There was no information on the cassette about the band - just Our Lady Peace," Raine commented on the effort.

The second album being dropped by this band was called "Clumsy". it made its way out in 1997, and featured such hit singles as "Superman's Dead", "Automatic Flowers", "Clumsy", "4 A.M." and "Carnival". Two years later, they returned with another studio project "Happiness Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch". In 2000, they came up with "Spiritual Machines and the next year, cooked up new materials for their next album with producer Bob Rock. At that time, Mike Turner walked out of the band, citing "creative differences" as the cause. They then recruited Steve Mazur to fill in the shoes of Mike.

The result of their work with Bob Rock was a record called "Gravity". They made it available for purchase in June 2002. They gained mainstream popularity when "Innocent", one of the singles in the album, was performed by David Cook on an episode of "American Idol" season seven.

2005 was the time they brought out "Healthy in Paranoid Times". Raine said of the set, "When you're a brand new band, there's a tingly sort of feeling you get when you play a song that you just wrote. With this album, we kept working until we got that feeling from every song."

The first single, "Where Are You," addresses the search for spirituality in a sea of corruption. "After spending some time in the Middle East and Africa, I came back and saw just how powerful the religious right wing of North America is," Raine explained. "I thought it was a culture shock going over to these places, but the real culture shock was coming back home."

"This record is a perfect representation of our personalities and our perspectives on things at the current moment," Jeremy added. Raine commented further, "This is the real Our Lady Peace. It's the four of us making music together and an honest reflection of the seed of everything we planted 10 years ago."

In 2009, they put out another studio album "Burn Burn". This record becomes their first album which is not involved people outside the band on the production table as all the tracks were produced by Raine. It is released across United States on July 21.