Sleeping At Last

Sleeping at Last came together in 1999 in the Chicago suburbs as an emo-tinged alt-rock trio built around guitarist and vocalist Ryan O'Neal, his brother Chad O'Neal on drums, and bassist Dan Perdue. The group steadily developed a local audience by performing at every available venue and taking on scattered support slots. Their self-released album Capture drew the notice of Billy Corgan, who, as the onetime Smashing Pumpkins leader, helped the band secure a contract with Interscope Records in late 2002. Their first album under the label, Ghosts, appeared in October 2003 and led to a national tour opening for Switchfoot. Keep No Score followed as an independent release in 2006, while 2009 brought Storyboards, which included orchestral arrangements by Van Dyke Parks.

By then Sleeping at Last had shifted into a solo project for Ryan O'Neal, whose rising profile as a composer placed songs on television programs such as Grey's Anatomy, Bones, Criminal Minds, Believe, and So You Think You Can Dance. The track “Turning Page” appeared in two versions on the soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. O'Neal also composed the score for Kid President: Declaration of Awesome, the HUB network children’s series produced by Rainn Wilson. In 2011 he began issuing three songs each month under the Sleeping at Last name through the subscription-based Yearbook project. The conceptual Atlas series adopted the same release format in 2013, completing its opening chapter, Atlas: Year One (30 Songs), the next year. Covers, Vol. 1, commissioned by ABC for Grey's Anatomy, arrived that same year. Original motion picture soundtracks for Many Beautiful Things and The Spring appeared in 2016, when Covers, Vol. 2 was also released, followed by Atlas: Space in 2017.