It all began in February 2002 when the four heros of our story got together in Rome (Yes, that’s Rome, Italy.) with the shared dream of starting a special project. All four of them shared rich musical backgrounds stemming from their childhoods, as well as bringing their own personal experiences from previous bands with them into this new project. Also linking them was their strong love for the new wave of Punk coming out of the USA. So in late 2002, with all four of them shoved into a garage in Rome, they set off in pursuit of making the dream happen. They recorded their first demo without any outside help and created a sound whose quality spoke for itself; Shortly after shopping it around, Vanilla Sky began to play their first live shows. The 5 track demo titled “Play It If You Can’t Say It” sold out in less than two months, and people started to take notice...
The dream had begun, and the buzz about Vanilla Sky had started! With so much noise surrounding these guys it wasn’t long until they were noticed. More experienced bands in the Italian Punk / Rock scene began inviting them on the road, giving them the opportunity to play throughout Italy. By now, more than just bands were taking notice - and they were approached by the emerging indie label Wynona Records (Genoa, Italy). In January 2003 the guys signed their first record deal.
The four way split titled “Too Loud For You” was released shortly thereafter, quickly followed by the 5 way split “The Rest Is History” which reached fans as far as Japan via the prominent indie label Ambience Records. (Japan?? Hello! JAPAN! Pretty sweet for a bunch of guys from Rome!) Suddenly, the buzz wasn’t just in Italy anymore. It was all across Europe, Japan, and some of those American kids were catching up. Just a little. Vanilla Sky was on it’s way!
Skip to the summer of 2003. With so much work happening in the studio, the guys hadn’t had much opportunity to play live shows. So, with their instruments in hand, CD’s and merchandise waiting to be sold, they shoved it all into their little two door cars (as amazingly impossible as that sounds) and hit the road. They played until they bled (quite literally) and after a considerable amount of time spent away from home, felt they were ready. Their abilities had been honed to a place they’d never been before, and with that in mind they hit the studio.
Eight weeks later, they left, and “Waiting For Something” was born. Vanilla Sky had made their first album. Not just a demo, or a split CD, a full length album. With it in hand, they hit the tour circuit again, playing all across Europe over a six week period with bands like Forty Winks (Italy), and The Break (New Jersey, USA). The buzz had exploded into a full out roar, and first time fans witnessing them play could do nothing but rant and rave about their stage show, music, and just how great the guys were in general.
It’s 2004 now. No longer just the small Pop Punk band from Rome, Vanilla Sky embarked on a new European Tour with The Maxeen (Sideonedummy) to support the coming out of their album in Europe. The tour lasted one and a half month , and shortly thereafter, they were invited by The Ataris to open their highly successful Italian Tour.
Before the dust had even settled on these two tours however, Vanilla Sky was already hitting the road again, playing all across Europe (With the wonderful addition of a van to the Vanilla Sky family! Makes driving much easier...) The sales of their first album were going positively against everyone’s expectations: 13,000 CDs sold after only three months!!!
From June to September 2004 the band played at several open air festivals across Europe ending the summer season sharing the stage as co-headliners with Yellowcard and Floggin’ Molly at the Bologna Independent Days festival.
After merely one month rest the band hit the road again throughout the whole of Italy. This three month Italian tour, that extended itself from the high north to the far south – including the islands (Sicily and Sardinia) – increased the guys fame in their homeland. With this increase the demand of a reissue of the band’s first demo which had long been sold out grew stronger. This led to the effective reissuing of the “Play it if You Can’t Say it” EP by Wynona Records in December 2004 and released throughout Italy, Europe and Japan. The EP contains the five original tracks of the demo plus three previously unreleased songs.
In January 2005 the band went on a new tour of Germany where it also performed live on national TV for the first time. At the end of the same month one of the boys biggest dreams came true: Vanilla Sky’s first Japanese tour – a dream barely achieved by other Italian bands. Conscious of the rarity of similar a happening, the band members didn’t except such a hearty and enthousiastic welcome from so far away and different people. The shows were far more crowded than expected so that the label promised to book a new Japanese tour.
Once back in Europe, having had just about the time to show the relatives the impressive pictures taken in Tokyo, Vanilla Sky left Italy to star as headliners at the famous “Punk is dead”-tour 2005 in Austria. Immediately after, from March to May 05, another European tour passing through Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany followed and for the first time the band disembarked in the European homeland of rock: Great Britain.
On 27th May the band’s first full length was finally released in the USA, distributed by Capitol Records. During the summer the band performed again at several festivals throughout Europe, among which the “Rock in Idro” with Nofx, Good Charlotte, the Offspring, the Hives, and many more. The growing fame of Vanilla Sky made it possible for the guys to play as official support band at all the concerts of the Offsrping’s German tour.
With more than 25,000 sold copies of the debut album, over 5,000 sold copies of the EP reissue and after having drawn the attention of many European and international personalities in the music business, Vanilla Sky hit the studios again to record a new album due for February 2006. The future is Vanilla Sky’s.
Source: http://www.vanillaskyrock.com/main.php?action=about/bio
