Our Lady Peace

From a classified ad to a Diamond record

Our Lady Peace began in Toronto in 1992 after guitarist Mike Turner placed an advertisement looking for musicians and singer Raine Maida answered it. The line-up shifted through the early years, and today only Maida and bassist Duncan Coutts remain from the band's first decade. Guitarist Steve Mazur and drummer Jason Pierce complete the current four-piece.

The debut album Naveed arrived in 1994 and went four times Platinum in Canada. Its successor, Clumsy, released in 1997, became the record that defined them. It reached Diamond status in Canada and Platinum in the United States, carried by Superman's Dead, Clumsy and 4am, all of which still anchor the setlist. Happiness... Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch followed in 1999 and went three times Platinum at home, and the concept album Spiritual Machines in 2000 established the band's taste for bigger ideas alongside radio hooks.

The catalogue that keeps them on the road

Gravity, from 2002, was the band's biggest American moment, peaking at number nine on the US chart with Somewhere Out There and Innocent as the singles. Healthy in Paranoid Times came in 2005, Burn Burn in 2009 earned Gold in Canada, and Curve followed in 2012. After a long gap the band returned with Somethingness in 2018 and then Spiritual Machines 2 in 2021, a sequel to their 2000 concept record.

That gives them ten studio albums and, by the count Maida quoted in a March 2026 interview, 151 recorded songs. The trophy cabinet holds four Juno Awards and ten MuchMusic Video Awards, a tally that ties the record with Billy Talent. Over the years they have recorded for Sony Music Canada, Columbia, Coalition and Warner Music Group.

In the same interview Maida admitted he had rarely stopped to enjoy the band's peak years. He said he was never really in the moment back then, and that the anniversary run had been important partly because the fans so clearly enjoy it.

OLP30: three EPs, a film and a re-recorded single

The thirtieth anniversary was handled as a rolling project rather than a single reissue. Between September 2024 and February 2025 the band put out three OLP30 EPs, each pairing a brand-new song with re-visited material from a different era. The first carried Sound the Alarm alongside the biggest hits, the second added I Wanna Be Your Drug next to early singles such as One Man Army and Is Anybody Home?, and the third, released on 14 February 2025, introduced No Angels in This Town beside songs from Gravity and Healthy in Paranoid Times. The band described that third volume as the final instalment of the series.

A Canadian anniversary tour ran through 2025, including a Toronto show with Collective Soul on 24 February 2025 that the band billed as OLP30. A short film documenting the making of the new songs was released later in the year.

The most talked-about release came on 24 July 2025. Whatever, a song the band had not played live for more than two decades, was re-recorded with producer Nick Raskulinecz, whose credits include Foo Fighters and Deftones. The band said enough time had passed since the tragedy long associated with the original for them to reclaim it, and every stream of Whatever (Redux) now funds suicide-prevention initiatives across North America. They were also booked for the SiriusXM Kickoff show at the 112th Grey Cup in October 2025.

Where they stand now

In December 2025 the band announced that OLP30 was crossing the border. A 21-date US leg opened at the Vic Theatre in Chicago on 5 March 2026 and closed in Pittsburgh on 4 April, taking in Orlando, Boston, Detroit and Cleveland along the way, with The Verve Pipe as special guests on most nights. Maida's announcement was blunt: it had been a long time coming, but they were finally bringing the OLP30 tour to the USA.

By mid-March 2026 he was describing the run as a string of sold-out rooms. A review of the Atlanta show at the Buckhead Theatre on 16 March 2026 found a band still, in the writer's phrase, actively writing their story rather than trading on nostalgia.

The tour has now been extended. A second US leg runs from 29 September 2026 at Mulcahy's in Wantagh, New York, through Washington DC, Kansas City, Madison, Minneapolis, Tunica, Destin and San Antonio, before finishing at Summit in Denver on 13 October 2026. Beyond that, the band are on the bill for the Summer of '99 cruise sailing from Miami on 17 to 21 April 2027, which places them alongside the late-1990s rock acts they came up with.

The show today

The current set is built around Clumsy and Gravity but is far from a fixed greatest-hits programme. In Atlanta the band opened with Superman's Dead and ran through Innocent, One Man Army, Is Anybody Home?, Naveed and In Repair before dipping into deeper cuts such as Life Not Enough, Everyone's a Junkie and Temporary Healing. The anniversary single Sound the Alarm sits early in the running order. Covers of Pearl Jam's Hail Hail and 3 Doors Down's Away from the Sun broke up the back half, and the night ended with Clumsy, If You Believe, Automatic Flowers and Starseed. That evening's list ran to eighteen songs.

Part of the variation is deliberate. Rather than lock in a setlist, the band use a voting tool called Fandrop that lets people in the venue scan a QR code and choose songs. Maida's explanation was that they want the night to be as much about the audience as about the band.

Reviewers have noted how the four-piece copes when things go wrong. On the Atlanta date The Verve Pipe never made it after weather cancelled singer Brian Vander Ark's flight out of Orlando, so the headliners played without an opener. The reviewer reported no dip in energy, a crowd locked in from the first notes and a frontman keeping the between-song talk loose and personal, while Coutts, Mazur and Pierce stayed tight behind him.