Lit

Guitarist Jeremy Popoff and bassist Kevin Baldes met in 1986 and began playing together as teenagers. Popoff first played in Strate Lace with singer Derek Johnson, who later died in 2003 in the nightclub fire during a Great White show in Rhode Island. Baldes, meanwhile, formed the band Razzle with Popoff's brother A. Jay and Sean Holland, later adding Popoff and drummer Allen Shellenberger.

Razzle turned harder and heavier as Stain in 1994, and after finding that name already taken, the group became Lit and signed with Malicious Vinyl in 1995. Their debut album, Tripping the Light Fantastic, came out in 1997, and they built a following touring with Radish, Lifter and Reel Big Fish before signing to RCA Records in 1998 once Malicious Vinyl lost its distribution deal.

Their second album, A Place in the Sun, arrived in 1999 and produced 'My Own Worst Enemy,' which topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart for eleven weeks and won a Billboard Music Award. 'Zip-Lock,' whose video featured Blink-182, and 'Miserable,' whose video featured Pamela Anderson, followed it onto the charts, and the album went platinum in the United States and gold in Canada.

Lit toured worldwide behind that record, playing more than 286 shows, and have released seven studio albums in total. Their catalogue leans on tight, verse-chorus songwriting rooted in pop-punk and heavier alternative styles, and their live sets today still draw heavily on the material that first brought them attention.