Our Lady Peace, colloquially OLP, is a Canadian alternative rock band consisting of Raine Maida (vocals), Duncan Coutts (bass), Jeremy Taggart (drums), and Steve Mazur (guitar).
1990s
Our Lady Peace was founded in 1992 when Mike Turner placed a "musicians wanted" ad in a Toronto newspaper. Responding first was replaced by Steve Mazur.
Our Lady Peace first won recognition with their first album Naveed, released in Canada in 1994 and the United States in 1995. "Naveed" became a hit in Canada and "Starseed" a hit in Canada and the United States. ("Starseed" would later appear on the Armageddon film soundtrack. Their second album, Clumsy, released in 1997 and including the tracks "Clumsy", "4 AM", "Superman's Dead", "Carnival" and "Automatic Flowers", established OLP as a leading band in 1990s rock music in Canada, and a notable group internationally. Their music explored often deep intellectual and emotional themes with powerful orchestration and the unique singing voice of lead vocalist Maida, called "strange" and "paranoid".
1999 saw the release of Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, featuring "One Man Army", "Thief" and "Is Anybody Home?". The title track, "Happiness & The Fish", was not released as a single but is credited for spawning the catch phrase, "Talking is just masturbating without the mess." In 2000, the band released Spiritual Machines, a concept album inspired by Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines, and featuring "In Repair", "Life" and "Right Behind You".
2000s
In the early 2000s, some critics contended that the band's new music changed significantly, adopting an increasingly mainstream sound, with Maida's voice perhaps losing its "paranoid" edge. Critics of the band's fifth album, Gravity, called it "overproduced" and "too mainstream". That said, its first single, "Somewhere Out There", became the band's top-charting international hit to date.
In 2003, Our Lady Peace released the album Live, a compilation of fourteen tracks from live performances. Our Lady Peace also released a DVD under the same name, featuring 22 tracks, including all the tracks from their Live album.
Reports state that Our Lady Peace's next record will be released in March 2005, and while a name is yet to be announced, rumoured posibilities include Vampires and Unusual Amount of Common Sense. Maida, however, has stated that the album's name will most likely not be Vampires as the name lost its spark after a month or so of consideration for the name of the next release. For the past two years Our Lady Peace has recorded 40 additional tracks and is currently still in the recording process. Some of these tracks include Vampires, which was previewed on The Fox radio, Wipe That Smile Off Your Face; Walking In Circles and Picture. These tracks may or may not appear on the next album.
Discography
- Naveed (1994 in Canada, 1995 in the U.S.)
- Clumsy (1997)
- Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch (1999)
- Spiritual Machines (2000 in Canada, 2001 in the U.S.)
- Gravity (2002)
- Live (2003)