pole* was founded by karsten (v), thorsten (b), denis (g) and patrick arnold(dr) in early '95.
after two months the setup was completed by oli (g), who is
now with ambrose.
by doing his fanzine "inside view"
and playing bass in fullback, thorsten was involved in the hardcore scene.
he was the one who brought the straight edge spirit to pole*.
the first demotape was recorded in late summer of '95 and was very much in demand.
pole* got a lot of feedback in the underground scene and was offered to
play many, mostly smaller, shows. so pole* became increasingly popular
in german hardcore.
r?diger mahn from life force records liked our sound and wanted to publish a mini-cd with us. pole* recorded 6 songs, which had partly been on the demotape.
during the studio sessions oli suffered from tinnitus and had to leave the band.

with the publication of [ 180? ], pole* played live in germany and europe. we played with bands such as earth crisis, snapcase, turmoil, spawn, congress, chokehold, etc.
these shows made pole* to one of the most popular straight edge bands in
germany.
felix wrote us and offered his services as second guitar player.
the peak of this this time was a tour through sweden, as support for "refused"
and "damnation ad".
in autumn '96 2 new tracks were recorded and for the time being a split 7"
with stroke was published.
thorsten founded the label "pateline", which produced the mini-cd [ the wind ] in early '97. it contains all four songs, including a coversong from headfirst - the stand: a tribute to the oldschool hardcore of the 80's.


after playing several festivals and gigs it was time to work on new material.
from now on you could sense a different spirit in the band.
the songwriting was getting more technical and aggressive.
in may '97 "drive to p(l)ay" gave us the opportunity to support the canadian heroes "grade" on their tour through europe for two weeks.
we managed to complete the material
for pole*'s first longplayer "sky conquerers are falling from the sun"
by summer '97 and recorded it in the legendary "ingmar's studio" (Berlin)
that year.

to achieve a bigger and better distribution, we published at
"we bite records". thorstens label "pateline" retained all rights on the
vinyl version.
succeedingly, we did a lot of promotion shows with bands like strife,
madball or veil, for instance.
for familiar reasons thorsten moved to
berlin, and with him the main contacts to the straight edge scene.
lacking the support of the label "we bite" in promoting our latest output
[ sky conquerers... ] deteriorated the situation.
consequently, pole* obviously lost its presence in the scene, and things
around pole* got quiet.
with our new bass player ren?, we carried on with writing new songs and
played a few live shows.


speculating on a new deal with a 'bigger' label in order to get things going again, we recorded three songs for promotional use.
unfortunately, the band split up in '99, before we could seize the goal.
the last festival pole* played was the "radix festival" in speyer; the
farewell-concert of the legendary band upfront.
the last, but nevertheless impressing gigs were in blieskastel, schorndorf
and stuttgart (limelight).
after 1 1/2 years stagnation, pole* is back with the "hard-core" bandmembers karsten, denis and patrick, to write a
another chapter in bandhistory.