University is the time in your life when you’ll probably have at least one friend who’s in a band. Maybe they last a few months or a couple of years; they may play a couple of gigs at a local dive bar or a birthday party. That’s certainly how CHLORINE, the indie-rock band formed by a group of Toronto classmates, got their start.
After almost five years, CHLORINE shows no sign of stopping. The band has been steadily producing singles with an alternative rock, punk, and emo-pop sound; a full-length album is on the horizon.
While CHLORINE might embody the classic archetype of an indie band — a raucous group of young guys, constantly quipping about inside jokes and Weezer — the band isn’t just here to goof off. The talent and musical knowledge they possessed percolated from their boyish banter during our interview; they even broke into a flawless improvised cappella when prompted.
CHLORINE has five members: lead singer and rhythm guitarist Radin Vahid; lead guitarist and backup vocalist Ryan Chan; keyboardist Johnny McCrae; bassist Jacob Badali; and drummer Aristides Love.
Two members of CHLORINE are current U of T students: Vahid is a fourth-year student at Rotman School of Management, and McCrae is a third-year student in chemical engineering. The rest of the group is also composed of university students and recent graduates. The Varsity sat down with CHLORINE to discuss what it’s like being full-time students and part-time budding rockstars.
The Varsity (TV): What are the origins of CHLORINE — what’s your backstory?
Radin Vahid: We got bit by a radioactive band. [Laughter.] So I met Jacob in the third grade, Ryan and Aristides in the seventh and eighth grades, and Johnny in the 10th grade. When the pandemic hit, I was really getting into guitar, and then Jacob and Ryan picked it up, too. Johnny is a classically trained pianist, and Aristides had already been playing drums before we started. We had this talent show at school, and I was like, ‘Oh, let me get a group of people, we’ll do Oasis’ Wonderwall. That was big for me at the time. So then I convinced Jacob to buy a bass. I knew Aristides played drums, and Ryan played guitar, so we formed a band. The name came because we were all working as lifeguards at the time.
So we decided to do a show in Aristides’ backyard that summer to send everyone off to university. We learned a bunch of covers of songs that we liked, stuff that we probably wouldn’t play again, like Green Day and Weezer. From there, we made three original songs, one of them being our song “Electric Chair,” which was just released, which is insane.
TV: Who writes your songs?
RV: We all write songs — not all of us write lyrics, but everyone writes songs. Writing a drum part is just as important as writing a guitar part, it’s all still writing. So, I think we’re definitely all songwriters.
TV: What was it like finding and looking for a producer, going from a backyard band to now?
RV: Well, it took us years to get our current producer. Our first EP was with a different producer — at that time, we just wanted to make something for as cheap as we could. Our first producer was like, ‘I have a rate, but I also like to help the scene and I just want to see you guys get this shit out. So I’ll give you a hell of a reduced rate.’ We went in there and banged out our four songs, and they’re very listenable. Still, maybe not as high quality as the stuff we’re putting out now.
Aristides Love: It was the perfect start for us because we needed to start somewhere that was low commitment.
Jacob Badali: We had much time because I was away in Kingston, and I didn’t know what other people were doing.
RV: We had to do all [of our EP] in one summer.
AL: Later on, our current producer found us — he saw a video of us from the Rivoli, and then he reached out to us and gave us a whole doc with notes.
RV: And, wow, he showed us that he cared a lot, and to this day, we’re still with him because he cares. He’s got a lot of great songwriting knowledge.
TV: Who would you say your biggest musical influences are?
JB: Depends on who you ask. The music we make references bands like Kings of Leon, The Strokes, Pixies, and Cage the Elephant.
RV: Those are great; these are the bands we want to sound like, but I don’t think those are the bands we take inspiration from.
TV: Can you tell us about the first show you’ve ever done together and the last show you’ve done? What has that growth been like?
AL: Going into first-year of university, there was nothing said like, ‘Oh, we’re in a band together.’ We just kind of let our first year happen. Then — I remember this vividly — I was studying for my second-semester math exam, and I was so fed up with studying because it was April and the sun was coming out. I was like, ‘Fuck this.’ We did such a sick show last year. Why are we gonna stop now? I went on this website where you can book spaces, just some random first link, and I saw an opening to play at this shop called Taco Taco.
TV: Did you sell out your show?
RV: We did sell out. That’s called a crowd. We were shocked. We sold 200 tickets to our first-ever show. It was a phenomenal experience. We sounded terrible. The mix was awful. We played fine, but played way too long a setlist.
Ryan Chan: The odds were so stacked against us. We get there, they don’t even have a public address system really. They handed us this dusty mixing board and told us, ‘Here you go.’
RV: However, energy alone, some people felt that it was one of the best shows they came to. It probably sounded not great, but we brought so much energy to that stage that it didn’t matter.
RC: Everybody who came was also pushing the energy.
AL: I think Johnny said it best: ‘I thought I was in the Rogers Centre when I was in Taco Taco.’
JB: Our last show was in Kingston. I’m very glad it happened because I went to Queens University, where I’d seen the music scene in Kingston, and I knew there was so much hunger for people to see live music, but there weren’t always bands to fill those spots. So one of my friends reached out to me from a band called Carnelian, and he was like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna set the show in January. We want you guys to play with us.’ And we were like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s take it.’ It was on a Wednesday, but we still sold like 420 tickets.
RC: Queens students know how to go hard on a Wednesday.
TV: You could not get a U of T crowd out like that.
RV: No, they’re too busy studying.
RC: We even did some stage antics
AL: One of my friends crowd-surfed!
RV: When it’s going that well, nothing matters anymore.
JB: Johnny was running from one side of the stage to the other!
TV: Do you feel like rock stars?
RV: For the few hours before and after the show.
RC: Then I clock into my day job. It’s definitely a surreal feeling, just playing shows. Doesn’t matter what venue, just the act of performing along with the setup, the booking, the planning, actually physically moving gear back and forth, coiling wires — lots of coiling.
AL: There’s so much background work that doesn’t get seen that makes it all worth it on stage.
TV: You all study business, synthetic biology, or chemical engineering; you’re all STEM students! Would you say your artsy side comes out in your band?
AL: Oh, 100 per cent.
RV: I think the STEM and business side comes out in school, but the artsy side is the main focus.
TV: Does CHLORINE have fangirls?
RV: We have actual fans. Which is shocking; people we don’t know find us. Our last song did better in the UK than it did in Canada. We have people come to the shows that we don’t know at all, but know the words to the songs, and for that, we’re so grateful.
JB: Shout out to my little cousins, my parents, and my brothers.
RV: Yeah, our families are really supportive, specifically Johnny’s. Johnny’s extended family comes to everything.
TV: What’s next for CHLORINE?
AL: We’ve been talking about [what comes next] a lot these past few months. The overall goal is to turn the side project into the main project, slowly.
RV: Don’t tell our bosses.
AL: We’re trying to find a new sound. We’re working on a new consistent sound. [Our goal is to put] together an eight-to-10 song proper album set to be released at the end of this year or early next year; with the goal of having a big release concert with a bunch of connections and people from different labels and people from radio, people from the music industry, to pitch ourselves to them.
TV: And what’s this new sound gonna sound like?
CHLORINE: [Starts singing and beatboxing.]
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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