Liars Inc.

Liars Inc. emerged as a four-piece outfit based in Los Angeles, California, shaped by striking contrasts and early hurdles. Frontman Raile spent his childhood in Hollywood, where his mother served as a stylist to celebrities who frequently crashed on the living-room carpet after marathon parties, forcing the young Raile to navigate around their sleeping forms on his way to school. Over time he grew frustrated, jaded, and disillusioned, until his longtime friend Robin Diaz urged him to channel those perceptions into a band. Diaz’s steadfast optimism supplied a necessary counterweight to Raile’s darker outlook. Before long, the enigmatic bassist Dillinger and Ray Hartman—an uprooted native of Scranton, Pennsylvania—joined to complete the lineup. The group’s first release, Superjaded, appeared in 1998.