Some bands ride a scene until it fades. Silverstein just kept showing up. Back in 2000, a group of friends in Burlington, Ontario, named their band after a beloved children’s poet and started playing shows in a scene that would soon explode.
Twenty-five years, a pile of albums, and well over a thousand shows later, they are still here. They have outlasted the trends, the label changes and the line-up shuffles, and they are still screaming their hearts out for a crowd that never really left.
Whether you first caught them on a dog-eared copy of When Broken Is Easily Fixed or only discovered them recently, there is more to this band than “My Heroine.” Here are some facts you might not know about Canada’s post-hardcore survivors.
Here 13 interesting Facts you might not know about Silverstein
1. The band formed in 2000 in Burlington, Ontario, and named themselves after the children’s author Shel Silverstein, whose work they read as kids.
2. They self-released their first EP, Summer’s Stellar Gaze, in August 2000, only months after forming.
3. Bassist Billy Hamilton was a local fan who found out the band needed a bassist through an Ontario message board called “The 905 Board.”
4. The Silverstein line-up stayed unchanged for eleven years, from December 2001 to September 2012, when guitarist Neil Boshart was replaced by Paul Marc Rousseau.
5. Their 2003 debut, When Broken Is Easily Fixed, unexpectedly sold more than 200,000 copies.
6. The 2005 follow-up, Discovering the Waterfront, reached No. 34 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Juno nomination. They lost the Best New Band category to Bedouin Soundclash.
7. Arrivals & Departures (2007) was produced by Mark Trombino, known for his work with blink-182 and Jimmy Eat World, and topped Billboard’s Independent Albums chart.
8. Short Songs (2012) was a “mini album” of 11 originals and 11 covers, every track under 90 seconds long, a deliberate return to their punk and hardcore roots.
9. By around 2012 Silverstein had already played more than 1,600 shows in 42 countries.
10. The band left Victory Records in 2010, moved through Hopeless Records and Rise Records, and ended up on UNFD.
11. They covered OneRepublic‘s “Apologize” for the Punk Goes Pop 2 compilation.
12. Their 2020 album A Beautiful Place to Drown featured Princess Nokia and the vocalists of Simple Plan, Beartooth and Underoath. It earned a Juno nomination for Best Rock Album in 2021.
13. Silverstein is heading to South Africa at the end of October 2026, playing at Halloween 2026 in Pretoria and Cape Town.
Well, there you have it, 13 interesting facts about Silverstein you might not have known. If I’ve left out something important, feel free to comment below.
To get an idea of their sound, check out the music video for “My Heroine” below:
Watch this space for updates in the Facts category on Running Wolf’s Rant.
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