The Harlots

Blending melodic pop/rock with traces of punk, glam, and metal, the Harlots belong to a rich lineage of Canadian heartland rock acts stretching from the Guess Who through Bryan Adams to Sloan, echoes of whom surface in their sound, with Sloan proving the most consistent parallel. At the group's center stand three brothers: guitarists Buck Garinger and Lane Bradley Garinger alongside bassist Lee Charles Garinger. Born to a Canadian civil engineer whose assignments carried the family across continents, the siblings settled in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, following their father's sudden 1986 death from pancreatitis during a Nepal project. As they matured, each brother separately relocated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the 1990s. Before forming their own group, they briefly played in the Ballroom Zombies, a short-lived outfit fronted by Robin Black, who later achieved wider recognition as a Toronto-based glam rocker. The brothers then connected with drummer Mark Sawatzky, establishing the Harlots in 1997. After issuing their self-released 1998 debut, The Harlots, the band adopted the name Raised by Ghost around 2000 as a nod to their father's abrupt passing, though the moniker felt overly somber for their upbeat pop/rock and was abandoned ahead of the 2003 album Crawl Spaces. That follow-up, more confident than its predecessor and showcasing songwriting plus lead vocals from all three Garingers, attracted distribution through Universal Records, which subsequently offered the band a formal contract for the 2006 release Connoisseur of Ruin. Universal then reissued Crawl Spaces in early 2007.