They may be celebrating their ten year anniversary this year, but Suckerbox is still keeping it fresh.

With Reno Ciantar on vocals and guitars, Derrick McKay on bass, Mark ‘Tag’ McTaggart on drums and Rob Neesom on lead guitar, the band is still winning new fans daily with their fun, energetic and punk-infused music.

The band came together after Reno approached Derrick following a Ratskyn show with the suggestion to form a different kind of cover band.

“We started working together learning popular alternative music at that time with drummer Luciano Canzanella,” he says.

After red tape tripped up Luciano’s involvement, Tag joined Suckerbox in 2002, with the threesome recording the band’s first two albums Suckerbox Sucks! (2004) and Suckerbox (2007). Axe-man Rob is the latest addition to the band, joining up in 2009.

“We recorded our latest album Soon Come with Rob which we released locally in February of 2012.”

The name took a bit of brain-storming, with Reno saying that the one thing they could all agree on was that they needed to have the .com name and it should be fun.

“The name is a bit juvenile and was really the result of a lot of brainstorming. It just seemed to fit our style of fun, not to take ourselves too seriously type of play,” he says.

As for influences on the band, Reno says the list is virtually endless.

“We are all basic rock historians in our own right – with Tag it’s more metal, Rob is all about speed punk like NOFX, Bad Religion, Casualties et cetera, Derrick and I tend to draw from the bigger progressive bands like Rush, Zeppelin and so forth but as a group we all like to pay attention to what new punks and alt rock bands are doing today,” he says.

Although Reno might draw on the work of other bands, he believes sharing the stage with other artists is a bit over rated.

“I have the band I want and I really don’t want to mess with it,” he says.

However, when it comes to collaborations there are some producers out there the band would love to work with, like Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Garbage) or Bob Rock “since they make their bands sound phenomenal.”

Being a successful band, in addition to holding down regular jobs, takes a lot of work, but it is all worth it for that one perfect moment on stage.

“Every once and a while things sort of organically come together while we are on stage and the feeling is pretty cool – I think it helps when the crowd is totally into it and we are on a good stage with good sound but not always necessarily so.

Every band has its good days and bad days but when everything clicks there is just no better feeling in the world.”