1992-Raine MadiaVocals, guitar
Mike TurnerGuitar1992-2001
Duncan CouttsBass
Jeremy TaggartDrums
Steve MazurGuitar2001-
This Toronto-based band all met as kids. Their name comes from the Catholic church they all attended. They got together in 1992 when singer Raine Maida answered a "musicians wanted" ad in a local Toronto newspaper. Original guitarist Mike Turner had placed the ad in the paper and the two started writing songs soon after they met.
Raine Madia's real name is Michael Raine Madia, but while former guitarist Mike Turner was in the group he thought that it would be silly having two Mikes, so he just used his middle name.
Mike Turner left the band during the Christmas holiday in 2001 just before they began recording their 5th album, Gravity.
Steve Mazur was chosen from thousands of other entries to replace guitarist Mike Turner. He is the only non-Canadian in the band.
Madia studied Criminology at the University of Toronto. He said unlike other courses in university that just make you an analytical thinker, criminology "makes you really kinda delve into your own head I guess, because a lot of the time you are studying peoples' psyches. In that respect, it put a kinda different twist in some of my lyrics."
in their earlier days OLP opened up for the likes for Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant, and the Rolling Stones.
During an early interview, Raine was asked if his lyrics where politically motivated in any way. He had this to say: "There's a bunch of issues that we stand pretty firm on and will talk about and be aggressive about. But for the most part, the things that happen to us and me in particular, in terms of what I write in my lyrics, are not that unique. And there's no reason for me to sit on a pedestal and preach."
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Suggestion credit:
lorne - Toronto, Canada, for all above
Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant was one of the first entertainers to realize that Our Lady Peace was a special band. When Plant heard the band's single "Starseed" on the radio while touring in Canada, he invited the band to join him on tour to open a string of shows. High profile gigs with Van Halen and Alanis Morissette soon followed and OLP was launched into stardom.
Our Lady Peace's first album Naveed was released in March 1994. By the end of that year, the album had already sold over 100,000 copies and was certified platinum in Canada.
Our Lady Peace's 2000 album Spiritual Machines was a concept record influenced by science fiction writer Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. This was the last OLP album that original guitarist Mike Turner appeared on. In 2010, Turner resurfaced in the Canadian music industry as the guitarist for Crash Karma, a rock super group that also featured former members of The Tea Party, I Mother Earth, and Zygote.
When Our Lady Peace released their eighth album Curve in 2012, they were so excited to show people the record that they decided to jump on tour as soon as they could. As a result, the band played much smaller venues than they were used to playing, but the tour was a huge success as most of these shows were sold out.
Our Lady Peace began writing their 2012 album Curve in 2010, but after showing a friend named Jason Lader a bunch of the songs they'd done, they decided to scrap the material and start over. Lader told the members of OLP that they should write an album they would want to listen to, so that's what they did. Lader ended up co-producing Curve with the band.
In 2012, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida told
The National Post that he thought some of the band's singles misrepresented the band as a whole. When we
asked Maida to elaborate in 2012, he told us that "misrepresent" might have been the wrong word to use, but that he did feel like the band's singles didn't necessary give fans an idea of what their albums sounded like as complete pieces of art.
Raine Maida told us that their album Curve felt like a triumph for the band because it's an album full of the experimental moments. Maida explained that the band had been trying to get to a certain place for about 12 years, and that Curve is the closest they've come to that place.
