“Wine & Warpaint is what happened to me when I realized that everything I thought I knew no longer existed, or at least not in the way it used to,” says Brandon O’Neill, the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter behind the Richmond, VA based alt-rock outfit. “Since I was super young I’ve tried to be true to the path, wherever it takes me. At a certain point I realized I was pretty far off from where I used to be.”

This point of tension gave birth to the first notes that would eventually blossom into a full blown project. O'Neill headed south to Glow in the Dark Studios in Atlanta, Georgia and producer Matt Goldman (Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, Anberlin) to cut the debut EP "HOMELESS." The band’s simultaneously fresh and familiar sound channels an alt bite with a mid 2000s pop rock and emo vibe, moving seamlessly between brash rawness and contemplative restraint.

O’Neill is joined live by Taylor Bess, Colleen Christman, Hunter Glotz and Hannah Haupt to create a diverse and energetic live show. Before COVID, the band played all over Richmond and toured the southeast, and since then has released self-produced cover videos while tracking a new EP.

You know something until you don’t. You feel something until you don’t. In the mad scramble of consciousness we latch onto the tethers we were handed, with an illusion of choice, and build our cities on them. As you grow, you take each tool that’s handed to you. You work with it, learn it, and bravely apply it to what you’ve built, without looking back.

This is what happens when, after you’ve spent your whole life building, the next tool you’re given is a sledgehammer.

“Wine & Warpaint is what happened to me when I realized that everything I thought I knew no longer existed, or at least not in the way it used to,” says Brandon O’Neill, the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter behind the moniker. “Since I was super young I’ve tried to be true to the path, wherever it takes me. At a certain point I realized I was pretty far off from where I used to be.”

Where he was, in fact, was working full time for a church, which in his mind contradicted with these new, evolving perspectives. “I’ve been so deeply entrenched in Christianity since I was a kid that I’ve heard every argument, I know all the terms, I know how to translate when people say one thing but really mean another. I’ve been so engaged for so long that I know the dirty laundry behind what seems to be a great message. It came to a point where I couldn’t ignore that anymore. It felt like my being there was making me complicit with ideas that I not only disagreed with, but came to believe were negative and harmful.”

This point of tension gave birth to the first notes that would eventually blossom into a full blown project. The band’s simultaneously fresh and familiar sound channels an alt bite with a mid 2000s pop rock and emo vibe, moving seamlessly between brash rawness and contemplative restraint. “More than my own preferences or opinions, the emotion of the songs essentially dictated what the band would sound like,” O’Neill elaborates. “At the same time it’s right over the plate for me in terms of what I love musically. Really the goal of this project was to have it be as cathartic as possible.”

The pursuit of the right sound to carry the songs led them to Glow in the Dark Studios in Atlanta, Georgia and producer Matt Goldman (Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, Anberlin). “The whole list was Glow in the Dark,” says O’Neill. “Too many of my favorite records were tracked there, so it really was the only option.”

O’Neill is joined live by Taylor Bess, Colleen Christman, Hunter Glotz and Hannah Haupt to create a diverse and energetic live show. Before COVID, the band played all over Richmond and toured the southeast, and since then has released self-produced cover videos while tracking a new EP.