OTTAWA, Not from Ottawa, Don’t Want to Be “Strangers” with Their Latest Song Stream

You’d think a band named Ottawa would be from Ottawa, but the Cleveland-based, indie rock band has released a punchy new single called “Strangers.” This is the first out of six brand new tracks that the band plans to slowly unleash over the course of the rest of the summer.

Bassist Jeremy Barnes had a lot to say about the song and its writing process. He commented, “Writing ‘Strangers’ was a very memorable experience for us because the whole song came together in about an hour. Outside of one tweak to the chorus during our recording session, the song remained exactly as it was from the day we wrote it. Our guitarist, Will Hooper, has this super distinct way of strumming and was playing around with the chords you hear in the intro. during one of our practices. The second Dale (singer) heard it he had him loop it and came up with the verse melody in a matter of minutes. It was one of those sincere refrains that just stays with you and when he delivers one of those to us, the song almost always becomes something.

I loved the melody so much that I stole it for my bassline (thanks Dale!). Our other guitarist, Tim Czajka, had been sitting on a really cool riff for months that hadn’t been used in any of our other songs yet and it just so happened to fit perfectly into this one. Before we knew it the song was written and we never looked back!”