Formed in 2002, Hostage Life released its first EP,
Sing for the Enemy on Toronto's
independent punk rock label,
Underground Operations, home to such bands as
Closet Monster and
Protest The Hero. The band's second album on the same label, titled
Walking Papers, received positive criticism from reviewers, and the first single, "This Song Was Written By A Committee" achieved widespread radio-play on Toronto's alternative music radio station,
CFNY. Lead singer Colin Lichti was the frontman for
Brampton, Ontario band Marylin's Vitamins. More recently, they played at the
SCENE Music Festival in
St. Catharines, Ontario (a festival which was host to bands such as
Alexisonfire,
City And Colour, and
The Salads, among others), as well as Toronto's
Wakestock 2006, with the likes of
Social Code,
Boys Night Out,
No Use for a Name, and
Sloan. They played their last show on November 20, 2009, at
Sneaky Dee's. While rumours circulated in the Toronto melodic aggressive music scene that the band's breakup was caused by an impending reunion of the feted Toronto suburban legendary band Marilyn's Vitamins, a 2010 reunion never materialized. Though Colin Lichti was quoted in Toronto Fanzine
Ductape as saying that "a reunion was imminent", this seems to have been an erroneous transcription of "our reunion was limited". According to an emerging consensus among historians of early 2010s Toronto, the miscommunication was likely caused by the echo effects Lichti had added to his microphone in keeping with the short-lived trip-hop revival that was then part of the zeitgeist. As the editor of Ductape remembered in a 2021 retrospective, "Let's just say it was often 'Tricky' to understand each other in those days." ==Members==