30 Seconds to Mars

30 Seconds to Mars (or Thirty Seconds to Mars and often abbreviated to 30STM) is a rock band from Los Angeles, California, featuring actor Jared Leto as the lead vocalist, guitarist & songwriter.

Formation
Created in 1998 by Jared Leto and his brother, Shannon, 30 Seconds to Mars began as a small family project. Things began to speed up quickly, and Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist and keyboard player. After working with small revolving door of guitarists (as the band's first two guitarists, Kevin Drake and Solon Bixler, left the band due to issues primarily related to touring), the three auditioned Tomo Miličević to round out the band's roster.

According to an interview from Virgin Records, the band's name

"actually comes from a thesis that the band found online that was written by a former Harvard professor. And one of the subsections of the thesis was titled 'thirty seconds to mars[sic]' and he goes on to talk about the expediential growth of technology that relates to humans and saying that we are quite literally thirty seconds to mars. What it means to us is, we thought it best described our music, in short."

30 Seconds to Mars (2002 - 2005)
The band's debut album 30 Seconds to Mars, produced by Bob Ezrin, was released in 2002 to mixed reviews and achieved sales of just over 100,000. The album produced two singles, Capricorn (A Brand New Name) and Edge of the Earth. The former peaked at #31 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart.

A Beautiful Lie (2005 - Present)
Their sophomore album, A Beautiful Lie, was released on August 30, 2005. Because the album was leaked five months before its release, the band decided to include two bonus tracks: "Battle of One" (an original song that was also set to be the album's title track when it was first announced) and "Hunter" (a cover of the Björk song). To further promote the album, the band also enclosed "golden tickets" in 12 copies, which granted their owners access to any 30 Seconds to Mars concert free of charge, along with backstage access.

On August 31, 2006, the band won the MTV2 Award for "The Kill" at the MTV Video Music Awards, one of their two nominations. The second nomination was for Best Rock Video; however, they lost to AFI's "Miss Murder". In the video members of the band reenact scenes from The Shining. A Beautiful Lie was certified platinum by the RIAA in January for distribution of over 1,000,000 albums.

In October, the band began their "Welcome to the Universe" tour, sponsored by MTV2. They were supported on this tour by Head Automatica, The Receiving End of Sirens, Cobra Starship, and several other bands including Street Drum Corps. The tour was "environmentally sound" according to a 2006 interview with then-bassist Matt Wachter. "Jared and Shannon put together this thing called Environmentour which is illustrating ways—alternatives—to kind of clean up some of the mess we leave behind. We fueled the bus with vegetable oil," he explains.[4] On November 20, MTV2 premiered the video for "From Yesterday"; the video is the first American rock video ever shot in its entirety in the People's Republic of China.[5] The music video is loosely based on the film The Last Emperor.

On April 29, 2007, the band performed at the Australian MTV Australia Video Music Awards, where they were nominated for three awards, winning "Best Rock Video" and "Video of the Year" for "The Kill".

As of Spring 2007, the band is supporting The Used as a part of the "Taste of Chaos" tour and have scheduled a string of dates in Europe supporting Linkin Park. They are also scheduled to play Roskilde, Rock am Ring, Pinkpop, Give It A Name Festival and Download. Following other commitments, they will begin working on their third album.

Band Members
Current
Jared Leto - lead vocals, rhythm guitar, (sometimes lead guitar) (1998-present)
Tomislav "Tomo" Milicevic - lead guitar, violin, keyboard/synth (2003-present)
Shannon Leto - drums, percussion (1998-present)

Former
Matt Wachter - bass, keyboard/synth (2001-2007)
Solon Bixler - guitar (2001-2003)

Touring
Tim Kelleher - bass, synth (2007-present)
Kevin Drake - guitar (2001-2002)