I’ve done a lot less shows in the past couple of years but not because of being solo. RO: It has actually been really fun because I have a group of friends that are sort of my rotating band. It was really, really, really fun and such a cool experience to have my music exposed to such a sweet audience because they’re really, really nice.ĬC: How has it been different playing solo shows?
I got a really cool call that they said it made it into the movie twice. I bought the movies and watched them back-to-back and tried to imagine what the next movie might sound like. RO: I had never seen the film before I had always loved the soundtracks. I’m a sucker for strings and piano, so that arrangement happens a lot throughout my music.ĬC: How did you end up writing for the “Twilight” soundtrack? I would say it always originates from the piano or guitar and it usually keeps that shape pretty well. In the last few years, I would say it’s gotten a little folkier. I would work lot of string arrangements into the songs. RO: I started to fall in love with orchestral types of music. It’s like looking back at a really terrible haircut when you’re young.ĬC: How has the group changed through the years? I would have liked it at that time if anyone called it emo. I used to listen to Sunny Day Real Estate and things that kind of had that emo genre attached to it.
RO: We would have definitely described it that way. I made this rule early on that I never wanted to force my faith out of my music and I never wanted to force my faith into my music.ĬC: Would you say the band had an emo sound when it formed in 1999? The Christian music scene at that time was a really big deal with the Cornerstone Festival. We sort of set ourselves out really early as being that we would play Christian music festivals but we would also play bars. But at the same time, I wanted to make sure my music made sense in any venue. RYAN O’NEAL: I had this idea in my head that I wanted to, as a Christian, write music influenced by my faith. THE CHRONICLE: How does your faith influence your music? The Chronicle chatted with O’Neal over the phone about the band’s history, why O’Neal makes EPs rather than albums and how Christianity has shaped his music. So far, he has released Darkness, Light, Space 1, Space 2, Land, and is set to release Oceans on an undisclosed date.
Right now, O’Neal is finishing a four-year project called Atlas, a series of EPs revolving around the biblical creation story. With O’Neal releasing several thematically connected EPs a year, fans can either buy each EP separately or subscribe to get the whole collection for a lower price.
Sleeping At Last’s efforts have included “Turning Page,” a song exclusively written for “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1” soundtrack and covers of the ‘80s for the long-running ABC medical drama, “Grey’s Anatomy.”īeing a Sleeping At Last fan is like having a subscription to a favorite magazine or eagerly awaiting the next season of a favorite TV show because of his subscription model of releasing music.
Over the course of the next decade, the members went from emo orchestral musically before peeling off one by one until pianist and guitarist Ryan O’Neal was the only member left, still promoting under the full band’s name. As the Christian –rock genre was reaching its peak in 1999, Christian rockers Sleeping At Last were just hitting their stride in Wheaton, Ill.