Thirty Seconds To Mars

Thirty Seconds To Mars are back with their latest tour. Coming to Glasgow’s OVO Hydro on 16th April 2024.

In tandem with his hugely successful career in Hollywood, Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto has transformed his and brother Shannon’s band, Thirty Seconds To Mars, into an ambitious alternative rock outfit tailor-made for major arenas whilst consistently retaining their experimental, philosophical edge.

Not content with just his burgeoning career in Hollywood, the same year that Jared Leto featured in his breakthrough role in Fight Club, he founded Thirty Seconds To Mars. Though, the genesis of the band started long before 1998, given that Leto and his elder brother Shannon had been writing and performing music with one another since their childhood. The project gathered genuine momentum that year however, after the brothers fleshed out their vision by recruiting guitarist Solon Bixler and bassist Matt Wachter.

Tentatively performing across Los Angeles in a various venues under a variety of monikers, once they settled on the band name Thirty Seconds To Mars – taken from a rare manuscript titled Argus Apocraphex, a “metaphor for the future” singer Jared referred to their name as – that they began to gain notoriety whilst maintaining a distance from Leto’s rising star as a leading actor. The result was 2002 debut album, 30 Seconds To Mars, on Immortal/Virgin Records, which indicated the band’s ambitious scope, fusing electronica, new wave, and alternative rock with lofty concepts of self-determination and the human struggle.

Support slots with Incubus and Puddle Of Mudd raised the outfit’s profile, whilst Bixler left in 2003 due to the intensity of their touring schedule, with Tomo Miličević replacing him. This sparked the band’s breakthrough period, due to the global success of their 2005 album, A Beautiful Lie. The gothic, Stanley Kubrick-inspired aesthetic of the Jared Leto-directed music video to ‘The Kill’ etched their theatrical sound into the mainstream charts, with the track spending more than fifty weeks on the US Modern Rock chart, setting a new record.

Established as one of alternative rock’s most singular groups, an extensive global tour ensued with Thirty Seconds To Mars performing at major European festivals like Roskilde, Pinkpop, Rock am Ring, and Download Festival. 

Though, they’d be embroiled in legal issues ahead of the next major release, which inspired the “survival” themed This Is War. The 2009 album’s first two singles ‘Kings and Queens’ and the title track ‘This Is War’ both reached number one on the US Alternative Songs chart, which launched another worldwide tour where they’d play three-hundred album supporting concerts, earning their stripes as one of the hardest-working bands in the world. 

Continued stardom with 2013 album Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams, despite venturing into unknown sonic territory with an onus on art rock and electronica. Celebrating their parting from Virgin Records with a co-headlining tour with Linkin Park the following year, Jared stated: “We’re free and clear and excited about the future. It’s the most wonderful place to be.” Channelling this newfound creative freedom into 2018 album, America, extensive touring led to Miličević’s departure, leaving Thirty Seconds To Mars as a two-piece, returning to the creative core of just the Leto brothers once again, just like their childhood.

It took five more years for the alternative rockers to re-emerge with new material, the result of which was aggressive, re-energised, and typically bombastic 2023 album The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day, a full-length release which they whittled down from two-hundred songs. As ferocious and outspoken as they’ve ever been, the band are returning to the live domain at their zenith.