Relient K Bio:

In the beginning, when Matthew Thiessen and guitarist Matt Hoopes were still in high school, they just wanted to play shows ... local shows, regional shows ... any show. It wasn't about being "famous." They didn't take themselves too seriously (still don't) and the story behind their name proves it. The band is actually named after Hoopes' "train-wreck heap of a car," a Plymouth Reliant K! Thiessen was quoted in a press release as saying, "One night we stopped the car on the highway to see how fast it could go from zero to sixty. It took over fifteen seconds!" The band played their first show in December 1997 and a year later cut a demo with producer Mark Lee Townsend. Their sound worked and impressed tobyMac, who signed the band to his label, Gotee Records. Major Label Days: In 2000, Relient K came out with their self-titled Gotee Records debut, and even though it earned the group a Billboard Video Music Award nomination, it wasn't the album that moved the band from locally known to nationally known. Their 2001 follow-up, The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek, was the group's breakthrough - it turned Relient K into a headliner instead of an opening act. From there, the band went on to make the cover of Pollstar Magazine and share the stage with the big names of punk like New Found Glory and Good Charlotte. They've been played on the radio as well as on video games (Nintendo Game Cube's Big Air Freestyle) and hit television shows like Smallville, MTV's Tough Enough 3, and E! Entertainment. Thiessen may have called them "...just regular kids," but in the nine years since their debut, they've continued to grow in popularity, making them anything but "regular."