Kota Hoshino was born in Tokyo, Japan on April 23, 1975, and studied at
Surugadai University. Hoshino began working at FromSoftware in spring of 1998, feeling that his music would complement the games' visuals. His first role was composing music for
Shadow Tower for the
PlayStation. As the game uses very little music, many of Hoshino's contributions were unused, though some unused tracks were later used in
Evergrace. The same year, he contributed music for
Echo Night. Hoshino stated that he
cannot read music, so he usually does not compose orchestral scores. Hoshino was the composer and sound designer for
Evergrace, which released in 2000 for the
PlayStation 2. For the soundtrack, Hoshino used voices as the primary instrument, editing samples of his own with
Sound Forge to create an "ethnic" sound, in addition to instruments including
shakuhachi,
shamisen, and synthesized percussion. Following the game's release, Hoshino worked mainly on sound design, including
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and
Elden Ring, and returned to music duties with
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon as lead composer. During development, Hoshino was given keywords by game director Masaru Yamamaura in order to set the game's tone and evoke a "sense of loneliness and nostalgia." The game's soundtrack released physically on March 20, 2024, which included arrangements and some original compositions in a bonus third disc by various FromSoftware composers. For his own contributions to Disc 3, Hoshino sought to incorporate elements that he felt he couldn't deliver to the game's original soundtrack.
FreQuency Hoshino is the bassist and vocalist of FreQuency, a band composed of members of FromSoftware's sound team, led with Tsukasa Saitoh. The band released songs through the FROMSOUND RECORDS label. In 2011, the band released its debut album,
Armored Core Reprises, which contains arrangements of music from the
Armored Core series. In 2013, the band released its second album,
Sunrise, composed of original songs and arrangements. FreQuency performed
Day After Day, a song for the trailer of
Armored Core: Verdict Day.{{cite web |title=フロム・ソフトウェア所属のサウンドチーム"FreQuency"の新曲が11月28日に発売決定！ 『AC ヴァーディクト・デイ』のPVに使用された『Day After Day』が待望の音源化 ==Works==