Formation and early years (1997–2003) Motion City Soundtrack was formed in
Minneapolis,
Minnesota in 1997 by singer-songwriter
Justin Courtney Pierre and guitarist
Joshua Allen Cain. Previously, the duo had separately played in a number of bands. Cain was in a group named the Saddest Girl Story, and recruited Pierre to join as a singer. According to Cain, the members of the band soon realized that there "wasn't really anywhere to play [shows] in Minneapolis", and that they would have to "tour all the time" to rise in popularity. In its early years, the group went through several lineup changes. Through these, Cain and Pierre would often have to take over keyboard duties during shows. Their next two releases, both
extended plays—
Kids for America and
Back to the Beat—were released the following year. Over the course of the early 2000s, the band continued to tour and shuffle through members. In late 2001, while touring in
Milton, Pennsylvania with the band Submerge, they convinced two of its members—bassist Matthew Scott Taylor and drummer Tony Richard Thaxton—to join the band. Thaxton initially took about a year to convince to join the band. Johnson had never played the keyboard before but Cain taught him the parts that had already been written. They recorded much of their debut album,
I Am the Movie, in ten days. Initial copies were hand-packaged inside
floppy disks, which were sold out of the back of their tour van for a year. The band began receiving offers from various record labels, including
Universal,
Triple Crown Records, and
Drive-Thru Records, and they performed at industry showcases. Motion City became part of a slew of Epitaph signings, including Matchbook Romance,
Scatter the Ashes and
From First to Last, amid concerns the Southern California label had strayed too far from its roots, and seemed "a little too
emo."
Breakthrough and success (2003–2006) After signing with Epitaph, they recorded three new songs with the bands
Reggie and the Full Effect and
Ultimate Fakebook for a triple split EP which was never released. The new songs were added to the second release of
I Am the Movie, followed by an inaugural stint on
Warped Tour 2003. The band continued to tour heavily into the next year, with US dates alongside
Rufio,
Mae, and
Fall Out Boy, A European leg—titled the "Totally Wicked Awesome Tour"—featured the group with
Sugarcult,
the All-American Rejects, and
Limbeck. Cain invited Hoppus to produce Motion City's sophomore album, and he accepted. The album,
Commit This to Memory, was recorded at Seedy Underbelly Studios, a suburban home converted into a studio in
Los Angeles'
Valley Village region. It was written partially in their hometown of Minneapolis and in Los Angeles, during a period in which Pierre was seeking treatment for
alcohol abuse.
Commit This to Memory was the first album by the band to feature material crafted by each musician in the group, as previous releases had featured songs written in the years prior to each member joining. During its recording process, Motion City embarked on their first headlining tour, titled "The Sub-Par Punk Who Cares Tour 2004". Pierre estimated that by 2015 the album had sold nearly 500,000 copies. The band's music videos found regular rotation on networks such as
MTV2, and the band also performed on ''
Late Night with Conan O'Brien''. The group continued to tour constantly, It was followed by dates on the
Warped Tour 2005, Following completion of the album, Pierre entered a rehabilitation program for alcohol and drug abuse.
Even If It Kills Me was released on September 18, 2007, and represented a large leap from the group's last chart performance: it peaked at number 16 on the
Billboard 200 and number one on the magazine's Independent Albums chart. "
This Is for Real" became their best-charting single, peaking at number 48 in
Australia. Cain later felt that the band placed far too much emphasis at the time on "numbers and trajectory instead of the creative process." After the release of that EP, the band toured on the
Honda Civic Tour with Panic at the Disco and
Phantom Planet, In September, they headlined on The Left Handed Forms of Human Endeavor Tour. Motion City signed a multiple-album deal with
Columbia Records several months before releasing their previous album. Following the move, the guitarist Joshua Cain said, "It just felt right to make the move when there was the right interest there." Their next album saw the band reunite with producer Mark Hoppus, and the album was mostly recorded at his studio in North Hollywood, Opra Music, between April and June 2009. Hoppus said that the band wanted to follow in the tracks of
Commit This to Memory, but to push things further. Pierre later recalled that the atmosphere in the studio was more loose than their first time working with Hoppus. After completing the album, the band toured with Blink-182 on their
reunion tour, and Pierre undertook a promotional tour called On the Dino Trail wherein he performed acoustic sets. and it represented the band's all-time best chart performance, peaking at number 15 on the
Billboard 200. and they released a music video for the single "
Her Words Destroyed My Planet". The group embarked on a large tour with
Say Anything between October and November 2010, and premiered a self-shot video for "A Lifeless Ordinary" during that time. Columbia dropped the band later that year,
Final years and split (2012–2016) After being dropped by Columbia, the band set off to
Brazil to support
All Time Low in January 2011. They subsequently began recording their fifth studio album with producer and longtime friend
Ed Ackerson at his studio,
Flowers Studio, in Minneapolis. The band recorded on their own time with their own resources, which both provided comfort and a sense of nervousness to the group. "We just felt like it was like we were just taking our time and just kinda living life and not worrying about too much other than getting together and making music," remarked Taylor. Pierre has since looked back on
Go with mixed emotions, citing it as his personal least favorite album by the band. He noted that he was struggling with dark thoughts and felt that the band's collective misery translated to the record. During that time period, they searched for a label to release
Go, ultimately returning to Epitaph.
Go was released on June 12, 2012, and received mixed reviews from contemporary music critics. Its chart performance represented a large drop-off from its predecessors, peaking at number 46 on the
Billboard 200 and number eight on the Independent Albums chart. The group spent much of the remaining year on the road, including dates in
Asia in mid-2012 and a headlining US tour in October and November. The band enlisted longtime friend Claudio Rivera of
Saves the Day as their new drummer, and released a one-off single with him, "Inside Out", in celebration. and went on a co-headlining tour with
Relient K that November. in 2016. The group recorded their sixth album,
Panic Stations, over two weeks at
Pachyderm Studio in
Cannon Falls, Minnesota in June 2014. The group collaborated with producer
John Agnello, well known for his work with
Dinosaur Jr.,
Walt Mink, and
Sonic Youth. The album was largely
recorded live. The album's release was delayed by over a year, however, due to the birth of Pierre's daughter. In the interim, the group embarked on a tour celebrating the tenth anniversary of
Commit This to Memory between January and February 2015, playing the album in its entirety. The band later extended this anniversary tour, and further toured the album between June and August 2015.
Panic Stations was released on September 18, 2015, to positive reviews from music critics, but it debuted even lower on music charts than its predecessor. and saw the release of a split 7-inch between the two bands. As the band entered 2016, Cain felt the future for the group was bright: "We're not done yet. I think we got more music in us," he told
Substream Magazine in January 2016. Two months later, however, the band announced their break-up with a statement that read, in part: "We have no idea what the future holds, but for now we are done." In interviews later that year, Pierre detailed the band's reasoning, noting that their exhaustion with touring and growing families contributed to their decision: "We've done this one thing constantly for so many years nonstop. We all wanted to have something else to look ahead to in our lives." The band embarked on the So Long, Farewell Tour across
North America between May and September 2016, with original drummer Tony Thaxton returning. It concluded with a sold-out show at
the Metro in
Chicago on September 18, 2016. The group performed 36 songs — some dating back to their 2000 EP,
Back to the Beat — while both Thaxton and Rivera sat in on drums.
Reunion (2019–2024) During their three-year break, all of the members moved to different states and pursued different interests. Pierre continued to record music and tour as a solo act, issuing his debut solo album
In the Drink in 2018, which Cain assisted him in producing. The following June, the band announced their reformation with a U.S. tour. In an interview, Pierre explained their inactivity had given rise to an "excitement" to focus on the band again. The tour, named "Don't Call It a Comeback" for a song on their debut album, took place in January 2020. Thaxton returned to the band in an official capacity for the tour. The band were scheduled to travel to the U.K. for the
Slam Dunk Festival that May, but plans were shelved due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. The five-piece continued to tour in 2022, celebrating the seventeenth anniversary of
Commit This to Memory. In 2020, the group released three new songs. The first, a cover of
Fountains of Wayne's "
A Dip in the Ocean", was featured on
Saving for a Custom Van – a tribute compilation celebrating the life of Fountains of Wayne bassist and songwriter
Adam Schlesinger. who had passed away earlier that year. Midway through the year, the quartet issued a previously unreleased track, "Crooked Ways"; it was recorded a decade prior and submitted for consideration for inclusion in
the Twilight film saga. Author
Stephenie Meyer, in a blog post, suggested it was inspiration for her novel
Midnight Sun. Lastly, the group recorded a cover of
Ed Ackerson's "Wired Weird" for a tribute album to Ackerson, who produced their 2012 album
Go and had died in 2019. Cain claimed there was "no official plan" for further music at that point, although he believed the band was "not entirely finished" making new music. In an Instagram livestream, Pierre hinted at the future possibility of the band releasing new music while answering a viewer's question. Pierre responded, "I would like that. I'm not sure if anyone else would, but I would." In 2023, the band supported the All-American Rejects on the
Wet Hot All-American Summer Tour, staging appearances at Adjacent Fest and
When We Were Young. In 2024, the band embarked on an anniversary tour celebrating
I Am the Movie. Zach Comtois was introduced on this tour as the band's new touring rhythm guitarist; Pierre had found himself unable to play guitar live due to a back injury, leaving him to focus solely on lead vocals when performing. The group released the single "Stop Talking" in August 2024 to coincide with the theatrical release of the 2024 film
Dìdi, which the song features in. The single was the first original new material released by the band since
Panic Stations in 2015.
The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World (2025–present) On June 15, 2025. the band played the 30th anniversary revival of
Vans Warped Tour in
Washington, D.C.. Two days later, the group announced their seventh studio album,
The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, on June 17, 2025, releasing its lead single "She Is Afraid" alongside a music video inspired by
Severance. The album marked their first in ten years, marking their longest gap between records, as well as the first album to feature the band's classic line-up since 2012's
Go. Reflecting on the new album’s creation, guitarist Joshua Cain said it was about reconnecting with "what originally made the band special". Frontman Justin Pierre added that, unlike past records focused on personal struggles and confusion, he had since "found clarity and a stronger sense of identity through working through those challenges". The album was recorded by
Sean O'Keefe, a veteran producer who has previously worked with bands like
Fall Out Boy,
Hawthorne Heights the
Plain White T's, The band had previously worked with O'Keefe back in the 2000s, for split EPs with the bands
Matchbook Romance and
Schatzi. The band was confirmed to be performing at the 2026
Sonic Temple music festival in
Columbus, Ohio. ==Musical style and influences==