Stained Glass Army

Fresh off the last day of high school, local band Stained Glass Army is heading to Montreal to headline the Semi-Final Showcase Festival Saturday at Le National.

Stained Glass Army heads to Montreal this weekend to perform at Le National after winning a Landmark Events competition in Toronto earlier this year.[Whitney Neilson / The Observer]
Stained Glass Army heads to Montreal this weekend to perform at Le National after winning a Landmark Events competition in Toronto earlier this year. [Whitney Neilson / The Observer]

The band of only two years won the top spot after performing at a Landmark Events competition at Toronto’s Mod Club in January. The band – lead singer/guitarist Kyle Wilton, bassist Trevor Bowman, guitarist Mitchell McCloy, and drummer Carter Leis – released two singles on May 10, “Suburban Ruffian” and “24/7,” after gaining valuable recording time from their win.
Wilton said this will be their largest crowd for a show, aside from performing at EDSS for the final assembly. They expect around 750 to be at the concert.

“Plus it’s online, so there could be however many people watching online,” said Leis.

The Elmira band also got a chance to speak with the judges after their win. Wilton said they commended the boys on their performance and how well they played for their age. They said a lot of bands play, but don’t move around.

“They said that they liked our enthusiasm and excitement on stage,” said Wilton. “They said it shows we enjoy what we’re doing, being young also helped us out a lot.”

Leis added, “also they enjoyed the songs that we wrote and played.”

In preparation for the show, the band has been practicing twice a week and writing new songs. They’ve been playing more shows and getting lots of exposure, Wilton said. They’ll be playing one of their new songs at the show.

“Playing the show is going to be super fun, the opportunity to play a show, not necessarily out of your city or area, but out of the province,” said McCloy.

Wilton said it’s an interesting experience because they’re used to going to Toronto shows in awe of the featured artists, and now that will be them. He said he’s excited to see what people think of their sound.

“It kind of makes you more nervous in a way because they’re going to be looking at you like ‘these guys won,’” said Leis.

When it comes to nerves, the boys say they’re nervous right until the moment they play the first note. After that, they’re in the zone. Wilton said they usually do some warm-ups, chat, maybe jump around right before they go on to shake out the nerves.

Despite being the lead singer, Wilton said public speaking is a fear of his.

“I can’t public speak,” said Wilton. “I’m afraid. I can sing in front of 500 people but I can’t public speak in front of 10.”

He said once they start playing he becomes the persona he’s trying to get across and he doesn’t really think about what he’s doing. He says the more they think on stage, the worse they play.

“You’ve got to have confidence in your abilities,” said Leis.

Bowman said when he performs it’s like he’s not himself anymore. He says on stage he takes on an alternate band persona.

“When I’m out in public I’m not super outgoing, but on stage I jump around, just have fun with it,” said Bowman.

As for the band’s progress, they say they’ve come a long way in playing, performing, and writing. Bowman had only been playing bass a few months before the band came together.

“Writing is a big thing,” said Wilton. “You suck at writing when you first start. Writing is the one thing that I’ve noticed.”

Leis adds, “and our cohesiveness on stage. When we started we did not move at all.”

They will also be playing the opening day of Big Music Fest in Kitchener in July, a weekend event headlined by Aerosmith and Bryan Adams. They were one of 25 bands chosen from Ontario to perform.

Wilton, Leis, and Bowman have known each other since kindergarten, while McCloy joined the band late last summer. Wilton and Bowman decided in Grade 8 they wanted to start playing instruments. Leis has been playing drums for seven years and McCloy’s been playing guitar for 10.

“We just decided to practice a few songs, do a few covers, try writing a song or two, and then we had a little show at Carter’s church,” said Wilton.

They’ve noticed their fan base grow by playing shows with more bands and talking to promoters who come out to shows.

“We always notice it just generally goes up after you play a show, especially when you play bigger shows,” said Bowman. “When we played the Landmark ones we noticed that there was a pretty big spike in fans.”

Some of their musical influences include Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Billy Talent.

They hope to continue playing music professionally. McCloy will be attending Fanshawe College in the fall, while the other three will return to EDSS for a semester.

“In the end we’d love to do that,” said Wilton. “It’s hard, but we’ll try. - Whitney Neilson

FORKSTER’S Single Reviews Of Independent Music Artists

Stained Glass Army – ‘Suburban Ruffian’

Canadian Unsigned Band Really Bringing A Tune With Fantastic Rock N’ Roll Character

Platform:
Song: Suburban Ruffian
Band: Stained Glass Army
Hailing From: Elmira, Ontario, Canada
Band Link: http://www.stainedglassarmy.com/



THE REVIEW:
Brand new single called ‘Suburban Ruffian’ by Ontario, Canada rockers, Stained Glass Army, was a mighty strong modern day rock song. It had a fantastic balances of tempo, edge and energetic music force all the way through and leads me in thinking that this song will be a favourite to their entire collection of rocking gems. I really admired these rocking cats latest here and will certainly be charged up for more rocking tunes out of them!

FORKSTER Ratings:
From ‘Start to Finish’: Powerful song through and through!
Music Intensity: The energetic bounce and powerfull riffs and brilliant voice snarls were
Ending of Tune: ‘Rocking it out’ tight and impactful!

Stained Glass Army’s new single ‘Suburban Ruffian’ was self-released on Bandcamp 10th of May 2014! - Tim Forker

Who: Stained Glass Army
From: Toronto, ON
Where: RockPile West
When: Sunday, December 8th, 2013

Total Score: 7.8/10

STYLE:
Rock, with pop-punk influences.

CROWD:
The Rockpile filled out quite nicely by the time Glass Stained Army took the stage. People were clapping along and cheering the band on after every song. It really feels like the small-town band already gained some Toronto fans, and they are not gonna stop on that.

IMAGE:
Four young cute guys will surely break a lot of hearts over the course of their music career. Their outfits weren’t coordinated, but looked cohesive on stage. The guys really felt at home on stage, jumping around and striking rock-star poses. Kyle C. Wilton (vocals, guitar) talked just enough (not too little that it becomes impersonal or awkward and not too much) in between the songs.

MEMORABLE MOMENT:
Wilton mentioned that after their last show in Toronto a lot of people were saying that they sound like Green Day. I could see how people unfamiliar with the pop-punk genre could make such a mistake, but the boys decided to turn this into a challenge. So, they covered Green Day’s “American Idiot”. And it was a solid memorable cover, very true to the original.

OVERALL:
Stained Glass Army have a really good chance of headlining shows and even festivals down the road, as long as they keep at it. They have a distinctive enough sound, but are not obscure or ground-breaking, which will easily put them on the radar. The only thing that needs immediate improvement is the solos – while some were decent, a lot of them sounded out of place or not well-rehearsed. - Raya P. Morrison

A still-unexplained invite to take part in a competition in Toronto has netted Elmira band Stained Glass Army a chance to showcase their music to a wider audience.
The bandmates – lead singer Kyle Wilton, bassist Trevor Bowman, drummer Carter Leis and guitarist Mitchell McCloy – ended up winning the Landmark Events competition held last weekend at Toronto’s Mod Club.

Stained Glass Army (SGA) couldn’t believe their luck when an invitation of a lifetime came out of the blue late last summer.

“Oh, it was a huge deal. We were contacted late summer, the guy asked us to play in this preliminary round at the Mod Club and we made it past that and we played again on the weekend and we won. It was a big deal,” said Wilton.

A win against several Ontario bands and artists after several competitions culminated in last weekend’s show and dropped global distribution, a non-exclusive licensing contract and publicity campaign into the band’s lap.

SGA will travel to Quebec in the spring for a showcase concert, sending their material and press kit to a major or indie record label of choice. In addition, the boys will rub shoulders with Glen Robinson – a producer/engineer who’s worked with a long list of artists, from Keith Richards to the Beach Boys, The Ramones to Dave Grohl – during 36 hours of recording time.

Though the schoolmates have played a number of shows around Waterloo Region – appearing regularly at the Central Tavern in Elmira – the competition offered the first chance to play in Toronto. Now, they’ll be travelling farther still.

“We played a few shows, a few competitions, but none like that, never in Toronto either,” said McCloy.

Landmark Events is an artist development organization that runs shows for emerging talent in Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Kingston and Toronto with the goal of helping emerging artists of all creeds make it to the charts.

How the band got invited is still a bit of a mystery. Bowman, Leis and McCloy were in practice when they received an e-mail from organizers.

“It was just us three and we were watching a video and we saw the email and were like ‘uuuuum,’ ” said Bowman of the surprise.

“You were supposed to apply and send in a clip of your music or something like that, but we actually got contacted. We’re not exactly sure how,” Wilton said.

Despite the demands of school, extracurricular interests and families, the music plays a big part in all four of their lives, but that’s fine because the craft also encompasses the people closest to the band.

“Band is family for us as well. We all love each other’s parents, we all know them. We do put in a lot of time before and after school,” said Wilton.

McCloy chimed in, “We all have four families, basically.”

The strong support comes from not only families but also friends. SGA sold more than 100 tickets at the Mod Club as local fans streamed in to see the boys play.

“At that point it was just a dream that we would even make it to the finals let alone win and get to go to Montreal and play. Now I guess that dream kind of came true,” Wilton said. - Elena Maystruk