Glass Tiger releasing new music for the first time in decades

By Troy Hasselman, June 21 2019—

Nearly three decades after the release of their last album, ‘80s rock legends and CanCon staples Glass Tiger are back releasing music to go along with the groups largest tour in years as they hit the road with fellow ‘80s Canadian Icon Corey Hart in a cross-country trek that brings them to the hockey arenas of Canada’s major cities.

“The tour’s been great — I think the fact it’s between two bands has been awesome. It’s a privilege to be on the road with Corey,” says Glass Tiger keyboardist Sam Reid. “I think there’s a crossover between the audiences for Corey and us. The posts I’ve been reading have all been very positive and everybody enjoys hearing some of these songs from the ‘80s again.”

This year Glass Tiger released an EP called Thirty Three which is the group’s first studio release of original material since 1991’s Simple Mission. The tour inspired them to get into the studio and get to work on a mix of both new and old material.

“What happened is we’ve been asked by a lot of fans when we’re gonna put new music out and we had planned to release a few songs here and there through the year,” says Reid. “When we realized we were gonna be on the road and doing this tour we decided we’d light a fire under our butt and get back in the studio and do the EP, so we looked through our work folder and some of the songs are brand new. There’s a song ‘Keeper of Time’ which was written a few days before we went into the studio ad there’s another song on the release called ‘Show Me’ which has been kicking around for at least eight years on our work folder so it’s quite a mix of ideas that we’ve always wanted to finish and we stitched it all together and that’s what the music on the EP is.”

In spite of the long break between studio releases the band has found that their motivation and drive as performers has remained focused on their audience throughout the changes to the music industry and how people consume and appreciate music since their last release.

“The one thing that motivates us each night is the audience,” Reid says. “The songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s that people know, we still love playing them because of the reaction and people singing along to them. We’re very fortunate that we’re a band that’s only put out a handful of studio albums but we’ve had a lot of singles that have stayed on radio and in people’s minds —which is great — so you hear people singing along.”

The band is pleased with the reception Thirty Three has received and is happy to give their fans new material after being asked questions about new releases for the last few years.

“It’s been overall very positive,” he says. “When we’ve been touring over the last decade fans will say, there’s been a lot of greatest hits packages that record labels will release from time to time and sometimes we don’t have any control over. We’ll bump into people and they’ll say ‘Where’s the new music? When’s the new music coming?’ We’re really happy that we get to go across the country with a new album. You get to make the record for yourself and then push it out here and hope it resonates with the fans. So far the reaction has been very positive. We released the single “This is your Life” then we released “This is London” which is a rock track, a bit of a throwback. We’ve had some fun with styles on the record and everyone seems to be picking a different favourite which is a good thing.”

After the release of the EP the band hopes to continue touring and releasing music.

“We have a work folder with ideas in there and we’re really looking forward to releasing new music,” says Reid. “We’ve given our management a two- to five-year window in which we said we’d really like to put out some new material and enjoy the touring while we’re still having a great time doing it.”

The band played at Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome on June 20 as openers for Corey Hart. Their new EP Thirty Three is available on all streaming platforms.