Why Obsidian Shell? Obsidian is a black mineral with a light purple shade. Shell is protective magic in fantasy. So they can be considered as a black armor. But why this exactly? Well, the idea came when I noticed that wherever I am, whatever I do, listening to my songs completely detaches me from this world. I'm riding the tram, plowing through the Budapest smog, and yet, with my earphones on listening to Elysia makes it completely different. Like I was just a spectator from outside, protected from everything. Then my battery dies, the armor disappears, and I'm back again in the cruel reality. That's why it's Obsidian Shell. - Henrik

The whole story dates back to 2005. On the first of October Henrik and Gergõ formed a band with three other members. The name has been decided later to be IQ covering Inherited Quality for first, then it became Immense Quaintness. Practically it took two months to make the first album, which has never been released. Elveszett Lelkek, Csendes Káosz, A Vadon Rejteke and Búcsúszó has been written during this three months. On 1st January, 2006 Henrik quit the band, so the members reduced to four. The style transfomed to lighter rock, the distorted guitar has been replaced with acoustic in songs they kept from the above ones. They kept the easier ones, adding some of the former band of the guitarist-singer by that time. The name changed to Restart.

In April 2006 Henrik rejoined the band, and the left behind songs started to fade in slowly. The bigggest change was in August 2006: Alexandra joined the band as a singer. Wolftears has been written and from that point the whole band turned to an other musical point. During the autumn, Henrik wrote Dreamcatcher and a song that hasn't been put on Elysia called "Északi Szél" (meaning "Northern Wind") and those made the first demo named Farkaskönny in December 2006.

They got plenty of gigs the year after releasing the demo. Although they never reached fancy places it finally started to have some meaning. In May 2007 Thousand Years and Iceflower has been born which has been played only on the last two gigs.

In August 2007 Henrik started an English project under the work title "Asylum". Gergõ and Szandi joined him.

In 2008 the band started idling. Henrik started to work which made it impossible to have rehearsals every weekend. In June, he wrote Misanthropia, being the last song. It has never been played live.

In the meantime they started to record the full lenght album. Of course because the constant delays it took a while - the first material was mixed in September. Henrik and Szandi used all their free time to record the album making rehearsals impossible.

The tension between the members kept growing. The three of them started to rehearse without Szandi and Henrik, then they got bored with it and they never did that anymore. Both personal and musical differences have lead to disband. Gergõ, Szandi and Henrik left Restart.

Regarding that the album has already been made by the three of them, they throwed the idea of making the album a Restart product and they merged it into their other project. Asylum as a band name has been pushed into the background and by the common idea of Henrik and Gergõ it has been Obsidian Shell with the first full lenght album called Elysia.

Until 2011, two other albums - Angelic Asylum and Evershade - has been released, this time available for online purchase. Lives only happened twice, the last was in May 2011. Evershade was near being complete but as it turned out, Gergõ and Alexandra haven't considered themselves as a complete member by then. This lead to Gergõ quitting few days after releasing Evershade and a week later Alexandra left Obsidian Shell as well.

The news were a shocking surprise to Henrik but saying "life goes on" he started to look for a new singer. Just before the disbanding during a 24 hour songwriting session (where The Last 24 Hours was born, implying the last 24 hours spent making music together with Gergõ and the final cause of him leaving which was ironically Henrik refusing to finish the song at 4:10 and willingly continuing it) Kleó joined them with some lyrics she wrote for Alexandra, so they started to experiment how it would fit in Obsidian Shell with her own voice. The results were promising and a few days later Sophie applied for the main singer position. Wild songwriting and recording has started and at the very first minute of 2012 a new, 4 song introduction album Renaissance has been released.

Source : http://www.obsidianshell.com/div_en.php?p=bio_en