In 2005, Spymob decided to call it quits. The pop-rock quartet had spent the last few years expanding their global footprint as the opening and backing act for N.E.R.D., the alt-rock project of the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, after becoming the first rock group to sign to the duo’s Star Trak imprint in 2001. They’d already been through the major label ringer — they were signed to Epic Records to put out their debut album “Sitting Around Keeping Score” before L.A. Reid unexpectedly quashed plans to release it — and, a year after the album finally dropped through Ruthless Records, the group had reached its natural endpoint.
“It felt like we had played out a thing,” says lead singer and pianist John Ostby over Zoom, alongside his fellow Spymob bandmates. “We were on the road with N.E.R.D. a lot for over three years and promoted Spymob as much as we could. That whole thing was kind of slowing down. So it was either that we had to create a whole new next chapter for Spymob or pull the plug. And I wanted to pull the plug.”
It had been nearly two decades since they scattered when their group chat lit up with a renewed curiosity in reviving the band in January 2024. Spymob, now consisting of Ostby, guitarist Brent Paschke and drummer Eric Fawcett, had pursued separate vocations: Ostby and Fawcett became therapists in Minnesota, while Paschke settled in Los Angeles as a session musician, contributing to songs from Williams, Frank Ocean and Post Malone. But something about the collective excitement of a reunion struck a chord, and the machine started whirring.
