Well I think it was January, yes, January 2004. Good pals Moss Worthington and Nick Tkachyk came to a realization. They said We should make a band. That's the main story behind Kool Shades Soon the band had 5 (five) members including Moss on guitar and vocals, Nick on drums, Sean Mcevoy on bass, Greg Stanley on tenor sax, and Clay Gibson on Aiden Fishbein...err i mean on trumpet. Aiden Fishbein is a guy who later joined the band and plays trumpet as well. The music these 6 (six) high school kids made turned out to be ska (ska?). Moss always wanted the chill dub, but Sean always wanted the fast ska/punk. So the result was something in between-- with some ska and some reggae songs and, randomly, some metal songs too. Kool Shades are continually makin' jamaican music, which is strange because reggae is a predominantly black music form and these kids are all white, except Moss, but we won't talk about his situation. Oh yeah-- Greg Stanley plays the trombone now too. We now have combined many forms of music with influences from gangster rap, electronica, old school ska, and roots reggae creating the Kool Shades sound. Our influences are: "kill all the white man," by nofx, marley, toots & the maytals, miles davis, ben folds, slightly stoopid, sublime, greg stanley, long beach dub all-stars, jimmy cliff, jimmy buffet, cake, dr. dre, the police, mighty mighty bosstones, ace of base, usher, cca, fat city, explosions in the sky, godspeed you! black emperor, buju banton, rx bandits, pretty much everything reggae, bone thugs-n-harmony, the faint, michael franti and spearhead, icp, ween, atmosphere, pink floyd, cypris hill, red hot chili peppers, the beatles, reel big fish, black heart procession, catch 22, the format, streetlight manifesto, dave matthews band, clap your hands say yeah, devendra banhart, blood brothers,suburban legends, queen, radiohead, the toasters, the specials, the killers, 311, the pie tasters, the pilfers, voodoo glow skulls, muse, westbound train, goldfinger, elliott smith, idiot pilot, every time I die, sigur ros, 65daysofstatic, third eye blind, ?uestlove, m83, neon blonde, death from above 1979, sufjan stevens, saturday looks good to me, seu Jorge, mum, relient k, del the funky homosapien, gorillaz, mad caddies, dead prez, aesop rock, peter tosh, bob dylan, of montreal, METAL