One Way Letter

While forming in 2001, the band didn’t really start to kick off until the following year in 2002 when they started playing live around Atlanta which both the band and the community loved. In 2002 is when One Way Letter also recruited Selena as a bassist, where she would double as the lead singer as well. (And while I don’t know exactly when, Selena and Mark started to date, and they would end up getting married sometime in 2007). And after playing so many shows around Atlanta, they recorded and passed out their first CD which included six tracks. Those tracks being titled:

1. Arrogance Is Bliss
2. All Your Yesterdays
3. Get Down Sara Connor
4. So Goes December
5. July’s Too Cold This Year
6. A Semester Spent On The Road

Unfortunately, as of right now these are lost media. I tried my best to retrieve them from their sites archive, however I was unsuccessful because nobody had archived their download links, or their lyrics. But continuing with what I have of their timeline, In 2003 it was stated to have started off very well with a 3 song demo, merchandise, and being a local favorite in monthly shows. And this 3 song demo can actually partially be listened to by their websites enter page video, which I will link here, and their live performance of “All Your Yesterdays” can be seen here. (Warning this is a terrible quality video, as it was recorded in 2002.)

In November of 2003, they posted about recording a new 4 song demo, which I’m assuming is to follow their 3 song demo that they said they started the year off with in the sites bio. Also found in their site in December of 2003 are 5 songs that were meant to be Mp3 download links along with lyrics to their songs. Unfortunately like their 2002 CD, all these tracks but ONE are unavailable to download and are lost media to my knowledge. The names of these songs are:

1. Burn Down The City and Don’t leave a Tip
2. The 2nd Story Love Affair
3. Thriller Part 2
4. The Survery Says
5. All Your Yesterdays

Track 2, The 2nd Story Love Affair, and track 4, The Survey Says are actually the names of two songs that made it onto the albums itself. (However instead of 2nd its fully spelt out as ‘second’, and the last track on the album is called “…and the survey says”. This leads me to believe that the one featured on this demo is either just the demo version of the song that made it to the album, or it’s title on the album is a reference to the one on the demo. Very similar to how The Hotelier did with their 2009 album and their 2014 album, where the track “Southern Discomfort” is referenced and even quoted in the song “Discomfort Revisited”.)

During this time they were constantly going around and playing shows as well, which is something they continued up until the bands eventual breakup in 2007. The band absolutely loved to play live and had quite a big following which eventually led them to playing a US tour, and even playing on Warped Tour! While I was able to find them referenced on the site and in many other sources saying they were there, unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any pictures of them actually there, or any videos. They talk about some of the more popular bands that they played with in their websites 2004 bio, (this bio didn’t change for the remainder of the website being active). In this they state that they’ve played with bands such as Armor for Sleep and Silverstein.

2005 is when One Way Letter finally released their first and only album, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”. Released April 19th of 2005, and recorded December of 2004, the album consisted of 10 tracks and was released by Negative Progression records. Leading up to this albums release they were still consistently playing shows and posting a few songs from it before its release on their PureVolume site. This album was reported to be a success, scoring a 4 out of 5 stars from Alternative Press magazine and even alledegly being mentioned in the UK magazine Kerrang! Following the release of their album One Way Letter played live shows practically back to back from 2005 to 2006, which they played their biggest show to date on March 27th, 2006 which had them playing with Hawthorne Heights! 2006 ended up being another eventful and successful year for the band with their music video for their song “The Damage” had finished filming on July 28th 2006, which you can watch here. And on October 8th of 2006 Selena and Mark got ENGADGED! Around his time they also picked up a bassist named Tate Weldon, this was so Selena could focus on just singing while the band played live. They even played a couple of shows at the end of 2006, where they played 5 new songs that they had been writing.

2007 started off quite strong as every other year did. December of 2006 Negative Progression had posted that One Way Letter had wrote 7 new songs, and that January of 2007 the band had started to record demos of 3-4 of these songs, and then flash forward to March they released 2 of those demos on MySpace. And then on March 8th, 2007, One Way Letter played their final show at the Masquerade. They played along with Plain White T’s, Boys Like Girls, Lovedrug, and Dear in the Headlights. With the final update on the Negative Progression website posted on June 19th, stating that although they are officially gone they posted their music video for “The Damage”.

Although I wasn’t able to officially find the exact reason why the band broke up, I assume it was because of Selena and Mark. Being engaged October of 2006, bases on a comment left on their MySpace page they got married around September of 2007 and I assume they wanted to focus more on themselves and maybe a family, as in the future they did have one kid together, however they also did divorce in the future as well. As of 2025 all of the band members are still alive and well, Selena is now a hairdresser I believe, Mark is a CEO, Craig is in a podcast, and Lucas is making his own music and fishing.