With a message of hope, love and truth, Holding Onto Hope is trying to conquer the hearts of those who are weary. I’ve been following these guys for quite some time now and they seem like a sincere bunch of dudes that love what they do. When I heard that they were coming to Europe I didn’t want to miss the chance talking to them.

So guys, how has the tour been so far? What has been the best show?

Cory: Great! There was a show in Olbernhau, Germany.. It was a smaller venue, but it was really intense and Rockfest was a great show too. Like 2000 kids showed up.. So that was the biggest show, but overall it was great! We love being in a smaller setting, like really intense.

I don’t think Europe knows a lot about you yet, so could you tell me a bit more about Holding Onto Hope. How did you guys start, at
what point are you now, etc.

Cory: We all were in bands before.. and Holding Onto Hope formed in august 2008. We wrote our record Of The Sea in September until November and recorded it in December. Right when we released it in January we joined Come&Live. They’re not really like a label; it’s kind of more like an non-profit organization. They help us and we help them.. After that we did five US tours and this is our first European tour. So we’ve been together for a bit more then a year and a half so far. We’ve been stoked on everything that happened and made it possible for us to be where we are right now!

How do you describe the genre you play? And what makes you so different from other bands?

Mike: I think it’s mainly like all of us as individuals in the band. We’re drawn to a lot of different genres, like what we listen in our own personal time. From folk all the way to more heavy rock music. So I think through that, growing up playing our own instruments all those things come forth and that’s why we kind of have ambient, we have heavy, we have hard, we have screaming, we have singing and some how, through all that we found a way to measure it together. And I think with that it mixes the joy, the writing process a lot more, that we’re not tied down to one genre. We can just throw in what we have, all we’ve played over the years and some how it works out: kids enjoy listening to it. That definitely makes writing exciting.

Cory: Yeah, I think that a lot of bands are trying to be heavy to be heavy. I think we’re heavy for a reason, if that makes any sense. What we’re trying to assign to people, through a musical sense, has to be… has a sense of urgency, has a sense conviction, that is has to be heavy. So we kind of take.. it has to be wild I guess. So we kind of take all these aspects and turn them into a way to present what we want to present to people, and say what we to say in such a strong manner.. It’s actually just what mike said..

Mike: It takes a powerful way to get a message across.. Especially the message we have to give, to the scene that’s not so receiving of it. Kids come to a rockshow really not to hear about God and we’re not here to preach to them about it, but we’re here to let them know that’s purely the reason that we’re doing this. We wouldn’t be anywhere else in our lives without Him.

How do you guys write your songs? You don’t have a permanent bass player yet and I see Cory play bass on the myspace..

Mike: For this album Cory has been writing and playing all the bass parts. We weren’t sure how we were gonna do this, because all of play guitar, but at some point we all played bass, so we had experience, but it’s always better to just have a permanent member in the band who plays bass. So that’s basically what we’ve been praying for lately and giving it up go God. We were getting ready for this tour, not really knowing who’s gonna play bass and then our friend Gabriel (from Ascend The Hill) stepped down from his own band for the time being, to go on tour with us. So he flew out to California and we were still preparing for the tour, but at the same time writing new stuff, so he was able to help with that so that was really cool. So Cory was able to focus on vocals more..

Cory: As far as the writing process, it’s like.. I guess we write in different ways. A lot of band jam, but we.. Mike or Matt would come up with a riff and we just take a few riffs and I love to put the song together, like structure it. So I and Josh work together on the songs to take all the stuff Mike and Matt write and try to structure it in different ways and stick to the best option. It’s just a lot of collaboration, I can’t really say that one person writes the songs, we just try every idea and we go with what we feel is the strongest option. I think with the new cd, we feel a lot more that we want to write a record that’s honest and real and is us, but also very live and energetic.

What’s the story behind the upcoming album? And what does it gonna sound like compared to “Of The Sea”?

Cory: I think this new album’s gonna be more aggressive. We’ve all been going through a lot personally, a lot relationally… and there has just been a lot going on in our lives and that’s definitely going to show on record. This new record is going to be more put together, uhm the last one had a lot of all the ideas of what we were trying to be and I think the next album is gonna lock it in, on what we are as a band. It seems that we’re hitting the studio in July in South Carolina, to record the album that should be out next fall.

And who’s producing it?

Cory: We’re probably going to work with a guy named Jonathan Thomas. He’s a good friend of ours and he has a great studio, so we are super stoked!

What are your other plans for the future?

Cory: We’re going to do a few festivals… We doing Cornerstone in Illinois, Soulfest in New Hampshire and we’ll be touring starting in the fall. And it seems like we’ll be back here in Europe around this time next year.

And my final question: can you recommend any upcoming American bands to the kids from Europe?

Cory: Whoo that’s a tough question… Well all the bands on Come&Live! are really good and you can get their music for free! And I’m trying to think of a specific band..

Mike: I Am Alpha And Omega… They just released their new album on Come&Live! And the new album is a bit more ambient/heavy.

Cory: Yeah and there’s another band we toured with. They’re called Fallstar and they’re on Come&Live! too.

Well, thank you guys so much for the interview! Good luck with the rest of the tour, the recordings of the new album and see you again somewhere next year!

NOTE: HOLDING ONTO HOPE HAS RECENTLY BEEN ADDED TO THE GROEZROCK LINEUP! GO SEE THEM THERE: FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 18:30.

Information:

http://www.myspace.com/hohband