Stateless was a band founded by Chris James, James Sturdy, and Jon Taylor in 2002. After the three playing in hard rock bands together for several years, they wanted to make something unique in nature. Soon after, Kidkanevil joined the band for the band’s interest in hip hop. James Sturdy met Rod Buchanan-Dunlop during his college courses, and invited him to join the band. They started recording music in mid 2002 at the School Of Technology recording studio in Leeds, UK. Two demos from these sessions was released on their website in January 2003, and both were featured on BBC Radio 1. “Prism” was featured on an unsigned band competition, Stateless gained 3rd place out of the 6th bands featured, and gained the attention of major record companies such as Universal, Virgin UK, and Sony. Stateless signed with Sony Music Group in 2004 and got Jim Abbiss (producer of Arctic Monkeys) to be the Producer of Stateless, and they recorded for over 2 months. However, Sony dumped Stateless, leaving a full 14 track album called “Awake” that was recorded, just cancelled at the last second. Stateless had their first gig in 2004, playing songs live at a charity event. In 2005, Stateless went to Regal to release the “Bloodstream EP” in 2005, This was a 4 track EP with the songs from the Jim Abbiss sessions, all from their cancelled album, “Awake.” (Bloodstream, Inscape, Bluetrace, Exit…) However, around this time, Jim Abbiss passed several tracks to DJ Shadow and he listened, he was an immediate fan of the work Stateless has made. Chris James was invited by DJ Shadow to record songs for him for Shadow’s album, “The Outsider”. Chris James was also invited to tour with DJ Shadow. Stateless toured during 2006, However, James Sturdy, and Jon Taylor (2 founding members) left the band. This resulted in Justin Percival, and David Levin joining the band. With the new members, they recorded the songs “Crash” and “This Language”. In early 2007, Stateless started teasing their new debut LP with snippets. The album was derived from a few songs from their cancelled album, “Awake”. In April 2007, the Exit single released and included the B-side “Hurricane”, from the Jim Abbiss sessions. And finally, in June 2007, the Stateless album released. Stateless toured from 2007 to 2008. And started work on another album. The first song released was named, “Wade In.” Many of these new songs was debuted live during their tour. The band recorded their new songs from 2007-2010. In 2009, Rod Buchanan-Dunlop parted with the band. After this, they joined up with Damien Taylor (producer of Bjork,) to produce the new album. Stateless signed to Ninja Tune and released their album, Matilda. DJ Shadow was also featured on this album aswell. Stateless officially went on a hiatus in 2011, when Chris James started becoming a solo artist, but came back in 2015 to record the “Sixfold Symmetry EP”, but faded away again. The song “Ariel” on Matilda has use of a sample they never paid for, so the song has been off sale and not available due to this issue for many years.