*band of the month*

Stars Hide Fire is one of Washington, DC's best rock acts that solidified their line up in May 2003. This outfit blends elements of punk, hardcore, and rock to create a dynamic, innovative wall of sound. Songs address everything from social and political issues, to the difficulties of young relationships and the everyday hardships of growing up. Stars Hide Fire consumes their audience by combining melodic, poignant music and intelligent, emotional lyrics in an intense live show. The band has received national recognition with its first self-titled demo and an appearance on the first Made Clothing sampler.
The band's full story began in early September 2002. Since the break up of their band several months earlier, Alex Rivera and Adam Camber had been working on an acoustic project. They came to a point where it seemed that the songs would be better louder, so they called Alex's long-time friend Danny Celis to play drums. Originally from Washington, Danny moved back to DC from South Florida eight months earlier and was just starting to play guitar in a post-hardcore project, but he agreed to get together for a few sessions. The three of them hit it off and they agreed to demo some of the songs under the name Stars Hide Fire. Alex and Danny previously met Brodie Ruland at various shows around town and called him to see if he would be interested in playing bass on the demo. At the time, Brodie was working on a solo recording project and jumped at the chance to rock with a full band again. After a few practices, Danny switched to guitar, Alex started to concentrate solely on vocals, and they started the search for someone to record the drums. Numerous unsuccessful auditions led them to call drummer Chris Barrett to see if he would help out. Alex had seen Chris play with his band Rain Delay Theater (RDT) a few times and thought he would make a great addition to the recording. Although busy playing in RDT and going to school full-time in Richmond, Chris agreed to get together to learn the songs. They recorded 4 tracks, "Stitched and Glued," "Our Wounded Soldiers," "Broken," and "Rise and Fall," at a basement studio in Fairfax, VA in December and gave some copies of the songs out to friends. In November 2002, Brodie started practicing with Philly rock trio Breaking Pangaea (BP) after they parted ways with their original bass player. A few years back, Brodie played bass in the Philly emo-rock band "Brody" with BP's front man Fred Mascherino, so it was no surprise when he began to play with them full-time in January. Shortly thereafter, Alex also joined the BP crew doing merch. At the same time, the guys of Stars Hide Fire continued to get together whenever possible to the play and write music. Then, in early March 2003, Josh Madden of Made Clothing approached Danny about releasing a couple of the Stars Hide Fire songs on an inaugural Made Clothing comp. The comp was going to be given out at the '03 Skate and Surf Festival in Asbury Park, NJ and on Good Charlotte's '03 Honda Civic Tour, so it seemed like a great opportunity. The songs were sent to Mike Wolpe at Henninger Studios in Arlington, VA to re-mix. Made Clothing selected "Rise and Fall" as the opening track and the word about this new band from Washington, DC began to spread nationally. The recording sessions at Henninger proved to be so amazing that the band decided to self-release all four songs as an EP in conjunction with the Made Comp. They initially pressed 300 CDs with special cardboard packaging and played shows occasionally when everyone was available. In early summer of 2003, Fred left BP to play in Taking Back Sunday and BP drummer Will Noon started playing in Straylight Run. At the same time, Chris decided to leave school and RDT. Alex, Adam, Brodie, Danny, and Chris immediately came together to work on Stars Hide Fire full-time. Momentum started to build. The guys practiced several times a week and within a short time, they had written several new songs, were back in the studio recording a new demo, and playing shows on a regular basis wherever possible. With the help of a loyal street team and good internet reviews of shows and the EP, the fan base quickly grew. MP3 downloads rapidly shot up, making Stars Hide Fire consistently one of the top 5 bands downloaded from the Washington DC area. Several local radio stations began playing "Stitched and Glued," including WWDC 101 FM ("Local Lix" program), XM Radio "unsigned", WRGW, WAMU 88.5 FM, WGTB 92.3 FM. MTV featured a track from the new demo, "Fold," as background music on Total Request Live (TRL) after the producer got a copy of the CD and liked the music. At the beginning of September, good friend Rob Hitt of Midtown talked to the band about releasing the new demo on his new label, I Surrender Records. Adam and Alex had been sending Rob copies of songs since the first recording so everyone was very excited about his interest and unanimously decided to sign on. Stars Hide Fire were also asked to be part of MTV's Advance Warning special. In preparation they showed a video for their song "Still Breathing," with Chirstian Winters (Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Coheed and Cambria).