In Early 2000, the founding members Adriel Garcia and John Whitney hooked up with Elliott Sharp and formed Smugface; a progressive hard rock band out of Atlanta. This lead them to topping the MP3.com alternative charts and catching the attention of Producer and Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann in 2004. This sparked great change in the band in which they changed songs, styles, members, managers, lawyers and became City Sleeps.
In 2005 they signed with Maverick/Warner Bros Records and flew to Los Angeles to record a 13 track Album with Feldmann entitled "Not an Angel". Just months before the Warner release, news hit of Maverick Records, owned by Madonna at the time, was closing its doors. After a year of label limbo and contractual negotiations, they were finally free to sign with indie giant Trustkill Records. And on October 9th 2007, after many delays and almost 3 years after the album was originally recorded, the album entitled Not an Angel was finally released.
City Sleeps was to be the breakout commercial Artist of the Trustkill roster. And in many ways did so in their short run. Their singles hit radio stations across the country as well as in the UK. The second single "Not an Angel" was the highest testing song in AOL Radio history. The single Prototype was featured on mp3 players as well as in EA Game's MLB 06: The Show, which was the highest grossing sports game in history at the time. "Catch Me" was featured on ESPN during the Indianapolis 500 two years in a row as well as the Resident Evil Extinction Soundtrack. They also shot two music videos. One for the first single "Prototype" which was directed by Nathan "Karma" Cox and Zach Merck; who have directed videos for Queens of the Stone Age, Linkin Park, and Marilyn Manson. In 2008 they shot another video for the second single "Not an Angel" with indie director Darren Doane.
City Sleeps did quite a bit of touring, sharing the stage with Cold, Goldfinger, The Start, Our Lady Peace, 3 Doors Down, Saliva, Drowning Pool, 3 days Grace, Safely Suite, Theory of a Dead Man, among others; also hitting the UK with Funeral for a Friend and Kids in Glass Houses.
On February 4th 2008 City Sleeps announced that with the departure of yet another bass player (Brady Allen), they were switching to a four piece band; Milo switching from rhythm guitar to bass. And finally on September 5th 2008 after years of internal issues, they announced that they were letting their singer Ely Dly (Elliott Sharp) go from the band and that they were searching for a new front man. After two years of singer searching and a bit of soul searching, they retired in 2010. A b-side record is scheduled to be released in 2011.
