Ohio band Hawthorne Heights started rising up the charts in 2004 with a sound that has been labeled alternative rock, pop punk, and emo. Three studio albums, two major record labels, and one significant personal loss later, Hawthorne Heights is determined to do music their way by fostering an evolving sound on their own label. The band is kicking off their Summer of Hope tour to promote Hope, the second in a trilogy of self-released EPs and it’s a record that they can say they bled for… literally.

Inked Magazine: How's the Summer of Hope tour going so far?

Hawthorne Heights: So far so good. We've already played 3 shows, so we're just getting going. We still have another 35 to go or something like that. The shows have been fun so far and I think they're going to get better as we go along. I know we're going to be playing a lot of places that we typically do really well in. It should be a lot of fun.

Inked: What can we expect from your new EP coming out, Hope?

HH: The new EP is very energetic. Much more of a positive message behind a lot of the songs, more so than our last album, which was entitled Hate, sort of a three part trilogy of albums that we're releasing and they're all sort of tied together. So this one is sort of the opposite of all the songs on Hate, which were darker and angrier. This one's a lot more fun and upbeat. Happy, I guess.

Inked: That's a really cool idea, having the two EPs release one after the other basically in opposition to each other. How'd you guys come up with the idea for this trilogy?

HH: We were sitting around with it and we've always wanted to sort of stretch our creative ways a little bit more than we've been able to when we've been on a record label. We also feel that the idea of releasing songs in album format with 14 or more songs is kind of an antiquated way of releasing music. People want music a lot more rapidly these days and kids are only going to listen to a few songs on the album anyways before they just delete it or move on to the next album. So for us, there really wasn't much sense in releasing or writing and recording and spending all this time and money and effort in writing 13 or 14 songs only to never play most of them live and for most people to never bother listening to them. So it made more sense to release more albums in a shorter amount of time. At the same point, it gave us the creative freedom to evolve more rapidly and try different things.