The story of Poets of the Fall begins in 2002 in Helsinki, Finland, when singer Mark and guitarist Ollie, coming from differing musical backgrounds, started writing songs together. "We'd been jamming together in a group all year long, and we'd seen during that time that our styles meshed together nicely, so we started co-writing our songs." Later on producer/musician Captain joined in all the fun and mayhem.
The name, Poets of the Fall, comes from the idea that two opposites form a whole, ie. there isn't one without the other. "Poets" here represent the positive side and "the Fall" the negative. Of course, when you join these two concepts, the "Poets" starts to sound just a tad mischievious as well... depends, of course, on how you perceive "the Fall". You might see it as a beautiful crisp season and the "Poets" are its insightful architects...
The story behind the song "Late Goodbye" in the computer game Max Payne 2, as told by Mark: "The guys from Remedy had heard our music before and asked us to write a song for the game. Happily we complied. Sam Lake sent me a poem he'd written some time ago, and said I could use whatever images the poem conjured up in my head, to write the lyrics. This was great since it really worked to inspire me. I sat on my kitchen floor that night, with my guitar, and wrote the song".