(Photo courteousy of Driven Far Off)

This picture above is an old one, isn’t it? If you’ve known The Starting Line as long as I have, it really takes you back.

Over the course of their last 4 months or so, I had a feeling something was on the horizon after listening to one of my favorite Starting Line albums, Direction, which was something they had been trying to find over the life of the band. Count them, five total – We The People, Drive-Thru, MCA, Geffen, Virgin, The Capitol Music Group. When I was listening to Direction, one of the songs that really stood out the most, message-wise, “Somebody’s Gonna Miss Us”, which sung of what it would be like without TSL on stage anymore.

They were right – after years of making albums, they’ve gained a large fan base, but never really broke into complete pop-punk stardom like they have planned. But that’s now what makes a great band now, is it… TSL will be one of my favorite pop-punk bands to this day and I couldn’t be more happy for the directions in their lives they are taking, with Kenny starting up with his band ‘Person L‘ and Matt and Tom working on their side project The Seventy Six.

Although the band claims they will not be apart from each other indefinitely, they will surely be missed and will always have their spot in my music collection, with more memorable songs than I could count on two hands – for that, I’m thankful. Thank you TSL and best of luck wherever your future takes you. We will be listening, and you were right, will miss you…

Visit TSL on:
Their official site
MySpace
purevolume
Face Book

Here’s the official post:

“Imagine getting your first job when you were 15 years old and doing that exact same job for the rest of your life. Even if it’s the dream job that most people would kill for, eventually you need to stop for a minute and see what else is out there.

This is one of the most difficult decisions we’ve had to make but after eight years of nonstop touring and recording The Starting Line will be taking a break after their headline tour with Bayside, Four Year Strong and Steel Train (March 18 – April 20) and the college shows following the tour. This break does NOT mean the band is breaking up or going on hiatus it just means were going to stop for a little while and focus on other things in our lives besides The Starting Line. This break may last a year, two years or a few months, as of right now we don’t know. We’re talking to some friends about doing a quick tour to South America as well as options to tour Europe, Japan and Australia again and we’re not ruling them out. We just aren’t going to be doing any full time touring or recording as The Starting Line for a while.

We’ve had our ups and downs with countless record labels (We The People, Drive-Thru, MCA, Geffen, Virgin and finally The Capitol Music Group) over the years and every time we thought we had the right team a label president would be fired, or our label would be taken over by a new company. At each of these places there were people who loved us and would do anything for us and others (usually the ones making the financial decisions) that just didn’t give a shit about our band and after going through this for such a long time we need to take a step back and figure out what’s next for The Starting Line.

Before we go we have one last tour to say goodbye to everyone and we’re working with our friends at pickRset to make this best tour ever. Head over to http://pickrset.com/bands/thestartingline/ and pick the songs you want to hear on this tour and we will do our best to play as many of them each night on the tour.

This is not an end but a new beginning, to celebrate this new beginning we have a some exciting news to share with everyone. Sometime this summer or early fall we plan to finally release the unreleased record that we recorded for We The People Records. We are also talking about putting together a DVD to go with the record that will chronicle the Drive Thru years. We have tons of tapes to find and dig through and interviews to do with everyone to properly document that part of our lives but we think we can have it ready by the summer.

Everyone in the band will still be busy so you won’t be able to get rid of us that easily.
Kenny just finished recording the debut record for his band Person L, expect to see a release plan and tour announced soon, rumor has it he may even make an appearance at this year’s Bonnaroo. You will also get to see the most recent addition to the Starting Line, Brian Schmutz in Person L’s touring band. If you want to check out some tunes from the L peep http://www.myspace.com/personl

Matt and Tom have been working on a new project with some friends, called The Seventy Six, and just happened to put up a myspace page today with some songs and videos. The sound of the band may come as a shock to some of you, in the best possible way. Please show your love and support and check it out. http://www.myspace.com/theseventysix They have some big plans in the works and plan on announcing them as soon as they can.

Mike and one of his close friends will be starting a company that we will tell you all about once all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed. Of course he has a band he’s going to be jamming with as well and when we have more to report on that we’ll let you know. Most importantly Mike will be making up some lost time with his beautiful daughters. He’s missed many a milestone and is looking forward to some much needed bonding time with his little girls.

Announcements like this are so hard for everyone, especially the band, and we want to make sure we didn’t leave out any information, so we’re going to be answering questions for the next hour or so at http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=301596

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last eight years and see you all this spring and don’t forget to go to http://pickrset.com/bands/thestartingline/ to pick what you would like to hear and buy tickets to the tour.

Matt, Tom, Mike, Kenny and Brian”

This is no attempt

To abandon anyone

It is the influence of the music we love

Popularity: 2% [?]

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