For Pennsylvanian punk-poppers the Starting Line, it’s been a long road with a lot of obstacles along the way, but it turns out that the band isn’t going to fade away no matter what label they’re on. Starting out on a small independent Drive-Thru Records, the band bought out their contract shortly before getting up-streamed to MCA, which subsequently folded months later. The band was then picked up by Geffen, where they released their debut full-length, Say It Like You Mean It, in 2002. Following their sophomore effort, the band was release from Geffen, and now finds a label home at Virgin. If it seems like a drawn-out process to you and me, imagine how the guys from The Starting Line feel… In a recent interview with Alternative Addiction, Starting Line guitarist Matt Watts talked about all of the label changes the band has had to endure. Although Watts didn’t have anything but praise for Drive-Thru, he talked about the band’s chaotic time during the collapse of MCA and the move to Geffen. “The thing is, our manager’s awesome, and we’ve always had the four of us and that’s who we always depend on. We’ve got ourselves to this point and no one can ever take that away from us,” Watts explained. “But to have a label that didn’t believe in us, which was Geffen at the time, who pretty much sat us down and said ‘we want to take you guys as a baby band and pretend you didn’t put your last record out but we want you to write your last record again.’ It was really discouraging and really disheartening. From that moment it was a really bad situation. It was just bizarre.” Matt goes on in the interview talking about how he’s actually grateful to Geffen for letting them out of their deal instead of keeping them in a bad situation, and how the band came to sign with Virgin, a label they consider themselves lucky to work with. Although the band’s fortunate to be at their new label home, one can’t help but think no matter what happens to them, the Starting Line will continue to do what they do best, make great music no matter what’s in front of them. When asked about the band’s secret to success, Watts said, “It’s looking on the positive side of things. We started this band for fun and that’s why we continue to do it. We all have fun doing this, it’s our first love. At the end of the day it’s the four of us that control our own destiny and I think that’s a really cool thing.”