The story of the band in its current form began in year 2000. Principle song-writer, vocalist and rhythm guitarist Tommy Dee formed the band from the scratch after moving from Savonlinna to Helsinki, and leaving the earlier version of the band completely behind. Back then the band was known as Holochaust and Tommy Dee had several line-ups with many different musicians and things just didn't seem to work in Savonlinna. Anyway Tommy produced the 71 minute long album called Ultimate Metal Trademark in his own home studio. The recording featured the latest of his Savonlinna era drummers (Mikko Purontaus) on the drums in 6 out of 12 songs. The rest of the drums were made by computer. The recording got a huge following around the world in Internet, making thousands of fans to Tommy Dee's music.

To get familiar with the history of Savonlinna era click here

The new line-up in Helsinki comprised of the front-man Tommy Dee, bassist Jukka, lead guitarist Rizzto and drummer Tony. The guys started practicing hard resulting as a debut gig in Nummirock metal festival after playing just 3 months together in summer 2000.

In the beginning of 2001 the band started recording their very first promo together - with this "new" line-up. The promo was named Valley of Misery and it included three songs which all were also featured on Ultimate Metal Trademark album.

Many gigs were thrown and the band grew its popularity convincingly. In the beginning of 2002 the band released their secong promo called PanDEMOnium, which also contained three songs and these songs also appeared on U.M.T. The band wanted to use these good songs so that they could prove to work together as a band. And since U.M.T. was never sent to any record labels there was no reason for not re-recording these "old" songs. This year we also attended to the annual Champinonships of Rock -competition in Finland. We finally won a place among the 6 bands in the finals which was a good achievement among the hundreds of the bands that attended to the competition. This time around we got some media exposure also, which was weird. Thou it felt good, of course. This wouldn't be the last time for that..

Later in year 2002 we decided to change their name because the name Holochaust caused unnecessary Nazi-associations and such. And the name didn't really describe our music so well, giving too harsh conception about it. The new name was chosen to be Darcane. Obviously we were quite ignorant at the time for not knowing about the swedish band called Darkane and quite soon we started to get negative feedback about it. We thought about the name change again but it seemed quite too soon to do that right away so we waited for about two years.

In the year 2003 it was time for the third promo. This one was named Survivors of the Holochaust and the title implied to the name change; we once were named as Holoc(h)aust and survived it. Get the point? :) The promo had four songs and still comprised of three songs that also were on U.M.T. but the opener track was the first completely new track from Tommy Dee since the release of U.M.T. The band's conspicuousness got even bigger and the band started to stabilize their name in the Finnish metal underground scene.

A year 2004 was a time of turmoil for the band and we went through lots of line-up changes. First our guitarist Rizzto decided to leave the band to start the one of his own. We soon found one Tommi Ahtila to fill the empty spot in the band and with him we released our fourth promo named Anamorphica in the beginning of 2004. This promo was the first promo that was done completely on a decent studio and our sound and production got very much better, resulting as even better reviews.

Later on Toni and Tommi Ahtila had some difficulties on getting along. This, and that our schedules didn't quite match, made Tommi to make a choice to leave the band after just 6 months together. Finally after the second hopeless trial we found a prominent guitarist Jere Lappalainen who very soon gained a firm role in the band.

In November 2004 we decided to get a new lead singer to the band. We only had two candidates at the time since we just didn't have time for more; the recordings of the 5th promo Sign of Victory were closing in dauntlessly and we also needed some training before the recording sessions. We found a guy named Sami Ilvonen and he was a real character along with his singing skills.

It was also time to change a drummer, just after the drum recordings of the Sign of Victory were ended. We didn't try to abuse Toni in any way; situation and problems just finally culminated to their extremes and we had to do this decision. We found Tommi Lehtosaari who was talented enough to face the challenging musical requirements of the band in the future.

In January and February 2005 Sami did his contribution on our 5th promo. Actually we did the training in the studio. As the recordings went on, Sami was in the singing booth and me and Jukka were in the monitoring room. We communicated through a microphone and after all the trouble we finally got everything done in few days.

The mixing of this 5th promo took some time and we got it published not until March 2005. At this point and after all these changes we one more time decided to change the band's name and we settled with MIND-A-STRAY which symbolizes the new relaxed and etheral style of the band. Also the name is quite characteristic with all the hyphens, and it sounds beautyful - just like our music does.

The promo itself got excellent reviews and we started to plan some gigs to throw, again the first time after a very long break. However the co-operation with our singer Sami didn't pay off the way we wanted it to. We had only a few training sessions with him and eventually Tommy Dee "had to" do the singing in the first two gigs with this line-up. So the things were kind of a way they have always been, and to be honest: it felt really good! There were also some schedule problems and by mutual decision we decided to let Sami go. Although the co-operation was later to be continued. In organizing gigs and such. Tommy also felt that nobody could be singing his songs the way he ultimately wanted them to, and many fans were also disappointed because we had replased Tommy Dee as a lead singer. So all those things combined was the reason to get Tommy back to do the lead vocals. We will never again consider changing this, no matter what.

The band is currently in a very good form. Lots of gigs are on our schedule and you will be hearing some new material from us in near future. The minds may be astray, but the band isn't.


Source : http://koti.welho.com/stiihone/mindastray1.html