The Roots of the band sink far away in 1998,
year in which MATTEO VAGO, the founder,
decided to build up a band with a strong, rocky
and essential sound, free from frills, main feature
which even gives the idea of the band’name:
you only need only a guitar, cables, PA’s and..
the ON-OFF switch.
The early years see a continuous alternating
of musicians on bass guitar, vocals and drums,
but finally in 2000 here’s the first stable line-up
and the beginning of a hard mess-tin made
of many concerts characterized by covers
chosen among AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Beatles
sets and, as news for cover-bands of the period,
some classic rock'n'roll or blues songs like
Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker
or Joe Williams, played in a hard mood!
After all, blues from B.B. King, Robert Johnson,
Chuck Berry, Yardbirds etc. has always been
the base of the inspiration and musical
background of the band.
In this period, drums were "beaten&kicked"
by SAMUELE SQUAIELLA who, with Fabio Turci
and Silvio Bianchi, became one of the “oldest”
member of the band.
The beginning of 2001 sees the first important
change: ANDREA MASTROGIORGIO joined
on vocals and immediately, a few months later,
the AC/DC covers became almost integral part
of the repertoire. On suggestion of many friends,
the band started a project of AC/DC tribute,
rather quite new idea for the period, when
the major request was for commercial coverband,
and at the same time, quite innovative from the
“stage” point of view: shows were based on
an extremely faithful show-act of the original
band, focused on the figure of the
school-dressed guitarist ANGUS YOUNG.
The band already had the idea of producing
their own songs, (after all this was been the aim
since the beginning), but it was unanimously
decided to momentarily keep on, the tribute
project, in order to create the best musical
feeling among the members and to grow up
a strong experience of live performing on stage.
Besides this, the good stability and the wide
range of songs in repertoire was ensuring the
necessary time and concentration to enable
the starting of a serious work on the
unreleased material project.
However during the following years, the tribute
took more and more place among
the appointments of the band, until some
"different creative point of view" and personal
problems of some members, did start creating
some changes to the band’s lne-up
(stable up to 2007).
During 2007 and 2008 the drums saw
LORENZO MILANI joining the band who has
been drummer for U.D.O. and coverband
ALTO VOLTAGGIO, and JGOR GIANOLA,
U.D.O.'s guitarist and founder of ALTO
VOLTAGGIO, as a rhythm guitar in many gigs.
The "unreleased songs project" was at this
point stand-by, first due to the alternating of
musicians, then to Andrea’s decision to exclusively
follow the AC/DC tribute, and also for the lack
of time available after work.
Matteo was keeping on accumulate ideas, riffs,
lyrics and arrangements to be used at the right
moment, beside the material created during
2005/2006, born always from Teo's guitar.
The end of 2007 sees the joining of the bass
player FABIO LAZZARIN into our family,
member who became fundamental for
the "re-birth" of the band, which reached
the stability with the return of SAMUELE
SQUAIELLA on drums, then the new entry
of DAVIDE BATTISTELLA to the rhythmic guitar
makes the new stage to ON-OFF to begin at
the end of 2008. This last phase of ON-OFF
rapresents the definite beginning of the
"unreleased songs project", focused on the
production of our own rockin' songs, in typically
Classic Rock style, sung in English, with Matteo
on lead guitar and vocals, decision which was
taken under the agreement of the whole band,
because of the difficulties encountered
in finding a new who could easily join
in a just-startedband.
By the way, the fact to have a smaller number
of "thinking heads” to be put together"
is absolutely a positive feature to keep in mind.
The Tribute Band project still exists,
(with ANDREA MASTROGIORGIO on vocals),
alternating gigs entirely devoted to the AC/DC
(marked as “ON-OFF plays AC/DC”)
to concerts only dedicated to ON-OFF
own production.
Year 2010 sees the BIRTH of the
debut-album of ON-OFF: RIBCRASHER...
so the band start a long promotional tour
completly made by gig where the original song
are the main part of the show.
With the first month of the 2011, a new
drummer join the band: ALESSANDRO MOTTA
that take the place of Sam, always in trouble
with his job! Actually the band are in tour with
some showcase-concerts of RIBCRASHER with
gigs that cover the North part of Italy and the Switzerland, then they're working on new
material... STAY TUNED!!!