Cover Story: Our Lady Peace • OLP30 – Thirty Years of Canadian Magic
Our Lady Peace
Canadian ’90s alt-rock journeymen, Our Lady Peace, have been going strong for over three decades.
With a resumé boasting of 10 full-length albums with over several million albums sold, four Juno Awards (equivalent to the US’s Grammy Awards), 19 Top Ten singles, and countless shared stages alongside established acts such as Van Halen, Page and Plant, I Mother Earth, Live, and Collective Soul, Our Lady Peace remains one of Canada’s most successful rock bands.
OH CANADA
Formed in Toronto, Ontario in 1992—named after a poem by Mark Van Doren (Our Lady Peace and Other War Poems (1942))—the band began gigging all over Ontario and working on early demos.
OLP’s 1994 debut full-length album, Naveed, became a massive hit in Canada, going 4x Platinum and giving the band a massive surge in popularity. “What I love about it when I look back is I knew nothing about anything; I didn’t know anything about the business,” vocalist/guitarist Raine Maida explains during a recent Zoom chat. “Even the record deal we signed, they said, ‘Hey, we like these demos. Here’s a little bit of money, go finish it. Make an album and send it to us when it’s done.’ We just did it without any preconceptions of what was to come. That record was the most pure musical journey I think I’ve ever been on.”
Signed to Sony Music Canada in 1993 on the strength of the band’s demos, the writing process and recording for the 11 tracks that appear on **Naveed took a year in the making. “It was just what we were doing and the fact that we could take our time,” Maida remembers. “Again, there were no expectations for us. We were in this crappy warehouse rehearsing, and we went into the studio, cut some songs, went back to the warehouse, wrote more, and took them into the studio. And it was just very organic. When you don’t have any pressure on you, the creative stuff is so pure. I look back on it like what it would be like to have that kind of naivety again.”
Our Lady Peace were in the company of other innovative ’90s alt-rock/post-grunge bands such as I Mother Earth, School of Fish, Days of the New, and Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few. During the mid-’90s, after Nirvana and the grunge genre began to lose popularity and merge into a new alternative genre, no one was expecting such a quick rise in this musical style. “Music like the grunge thing was amazing, but it felt like there were just so many good bands, literally all those Seattle bands,” Maida remembers. “Not that they all sounded the same, but they captured a moment and (we thought) we can’t just keep copying that. Bands like Catherine Wheel and that stuff were a big influence on me. Peter Murphy, The Smiths, and the like were the balance for me in terms of where my musical inspirations were coming from. Then it just felt like the musical skyline kind of exploded with all this really exciting new music, and we got to be a part of it. It was cool.”
ON THE RISE
OLP’s second album, 1997’s Clumsy, was certified Diamond in sales (1 million copies sold) in Canada with its title track reaching No. 1 on Canada’s Singles Chart, while also achieving platinum status in the US. The band’s popularity soared around this time. “I think with Clumsy* like with Naveed, it was really raw,” Maida confesses. “It was bass, drums, and guitar. Clumsy was just an extension of let’s spread our wings, experiment a little bit more. Then it just went down that rabbit hole in the next couple of albums; we got really deep into crafting different sounds and just had a lot of fun. We went back to a rock and roll record when we did **Gravity* with Bob Rock—a stripped down rock record—, and that did really well as well. We never like to repeat ourselves, as much as our record label probably would’ve loved it.”
Although the band’s third full-length album, 1999’s Happiness… Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch was equally successful, especially in its homeland, where it reached No. 1 and was eventually certified Platinum three times.
However, the band almost broke up after completing the tour for the Spiritual Machines album the following year. “It was a tough time because I think that record was a really bold but exciting move for us,” Maida remembers. “We did a concept record on Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which is all about AI. I remember I just felt like we were truly doing something original here; the music sounded original. It was just this amazing thing, and then it didn’t work. That was a left turn. Even with our label, it just felt like we made a mistake. It was just a tough time.”
OLP30 TOUR
Joining Maida in OLP are bassist Duncan Coutts, guitarist/keyboardist Steve Mazur, and drummer Jason Pierce. Due to overwhelming demand after this past summer’s North American tour with Collective Soul and Live, the celebration continues into this new year with an extended US-only leg. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of its 1994 debut full-length album, Naveed—which kicked off in Canada in February of 2025—Our Lady Peace will be hitting the road with its OLP30 U.S. Tour with special guests, Michigan rockers The Verve Pipe, kicking off on March 5 right here in Chicago at the historic Vic Theatre.
According to Maida, Chicago is one of the band’s favorite places to play in the US. “100 percent; we’ve always loved Chicago,” Maida exclaims. “I love that Vic Theatre, it’s got such a great old vibe. There’s a place in Toronto called Massey Hall where Neil Young and Rush have played, and it has that vibe to me; this beautiful old theater. Chicago’s just a sick town. I love the food; we love the city. Our guitar player, Steve, is from Michigan, but his sister lives and works in Chicago, so it’s going to be a dope place to start this whole thing. To kick off a tour in a city like that, it just kicks it off on a high note.”
Starting in 2024, OLP released a series of three consecutive EPs that featured one brand new track on each EP and an assortment of the band’s biggest hits. OLP went into the same studio in Nashville where Neil Young recorded **Harvest to record new songs “Sound The Alarm,” “I Wanna Be Your Drug,” and “No Angels.” The first new song of the OLP30 era, “Sound The Alarm,” was released on Sept. 20, 2024, as part of OLP30 Vol. 1 EP. “We released three new songs; it was kind of like separating the decades,” Maida explains. “The idea of making an album at that point wasn’t on our minds; we just wanted these new songs. We went to Nashville and worked with Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Deftones, Evanescence). He’s an awesome dude, and we did it old school. We went there, we stayed there for a couple of weeks, and we recorded three songs.”
On May 29, 2025, OLP released a nine-minute studio documentary, Full Circle, about the making of the new songs for the three OLP30 EPs (Volumes 1,2, and 3), which can be viewed on their official YouTube page. According to Maida, it was important to show fans the camaraderie and musical chemistry between the band members. “I think (the doc) was a good reminder of what the best thing was about making that first album. It’s just about being a band, that’s all I know. We went to Nashville and worked with Nick (Raskulinecz), (there were) no distractions, no family stuff, no phone calls. Everyone was just super focused. And so to be doing that as a band again, and walking into the studio together, having lunch together… that stuff gets lost sometimes. All the chaos of being a live band, and people have families and different things. I think that’s the way for us to make music for the next little while as well. To isolate yourself like that, to really dig in.”
TAKING IT BACK
Last year, on the first night of their 30th Anniversary Tour in Calgary, the band played their hit track “Whatever”—the then entrance theme to WWE’s Chris Benoit—live for the first time in 18 years after putting it to rest after the wrestler’s tragic incidents in 2007. “We knew Chris, we knew his wife,” Maida says solemnly. “We never really got to play it because that record came out, and I’m not sure what cycle we were on, but I think we were in the studio. So by the time I got out of the studio with the new album and we were going on tour, that happened. It just didn’t feel right to play that song live on the tour. People have never had the chance to really hear it. As a band, it’s pretty exciting to be able to play it, knowing that it has this deeper meaning now. I think it really resonates with people.”
In addition, the band released a re-recorded version of the song called “Whatever (Redux)” in July of 2025 and announced that all of the revenue made from the song will be donated to suicide hotlines and mental health awareness in the US and Canada. “People talk more about mental health now, and you start to understand Chris’s situation,” Maida explains. “There was a serious mental health issue there. This summer, when we were going out on the road, I was starting to think maybe this is an opportunity (to take the song back). So we went and rerecorded it with Nick Raskulinecz, and I changed some lyrics to put a bit more of a positive spin on it in terms of advocating for yourself. I think we did the right thing by rerecording and now giving it a new life with this mental health tag to it.”
PRESENT AND FUTURE
Although it’s been five years since the release of the band’s last full-length album, Spiritual Machines 2, the band plans to build off the strength of the three new songs they completed for the recently released EPs. “I really love the three songs from the EPs, and we love playing them,” Maida says confidently. “It feels like people are digging them. So I think we’re on that tip. I think it’s definitely a little bit of a heavier sound right now that we’re doing.”
According to Maida, the band is possibly planning to head into the studio quickly to record some new tracks before the start of their OLP 30 US Tour in March. “We just want to release some new music this year for sure; another three or four songs and then bundle them up with the three from the EPs and put out a record that way.”
Plans for the band after the tour are already underway. “We definitely want to get in the studio after we finish the US tour,” Maida says. “Probably this summer… I don’t see us taking another big tour, so I think we’re just going to do some festival stuff and finish some music. Then my wife and I have a project together that we do, so we’re going to tour that and finish that album.”
After 30-plus years, Our Lady Peace is enjoying a renewed interest from its fans, even attracting younger fans of this type of music who weren’t around during the band’s heyday. “I think we’re in a great place,” Maida states. “I think this OLP 30 is going well, to see the ticket sales as they are, and see all the fans come out. The gratitude and the idea that we built something lasting like this is very cool. So I think it’s just about continuing to be respectful of everyone’s time and of our fans. As long as they want to come out and see us, we’re there for them.”
Appearing: March 5 with The Verve Pipe at the Vic Theatre, Chicago.
-Kelley Simms
Category: Cover Story, Featured, Monthly
