Formed in 1996, the band had been composed of Jazz Nicolas, Jugs Jugueta, Kelvin Yu (on lead guitar) and Hadrian "Haji"
Cruz (on bass). The quartet performed at various school-based events and competitions with a handful of original songs and
Beatles covers. Unfortunately, communication and scheduling issues forced
Cruz to leave the group. This predicament forced Yu to take up the bass guitar vacancy, effectively making the band a trio.
The group continued as a trio until the middle of 1997, when a common friend in the Ateneo Musicians'
Pool recruited Chino Singson to play guitar with the group at a school event. Singson eventually went on to become a permanent
member, which solidified the group's current lineup.
In 1998 the band put together Revenge of the Unsigned, their first official CD. They did this with the help
of their manager Earnest Mangulabnan-Zabala, Eraserheads, Ely
Buendia, Buddy
Zabala and Romel "Sancho" Sanchez (Loquy, Cynthia
Alexander). The band intended for Revenge to be their independently-released
debut album in the event that no major record label would sign them.
As luck would have it, then-A&R manager at Viva/Neo Records Mike Dizon (Teeth, Sandwich
(band)) got hold of Revenge. He helped push for Viva executives to
sign the band and eventually release Little Monsters Under Your Bed.
Little
Monsters, the band's first major-label album, was released
in 2001 and contained songs from Revenge plus new compositions by Nicolas and Jugueta. The song "Antipara" was probably
the most well-known song on the album. The release of the album was somewhat ill-timed as its glossy pop-rock sound was an
aberration in the Korn-influenced OPM Rock landscape of the late 1990s to early 2000s.
