How did you guys get together?
I actually met Jon Fine because he was wearing a Magma shirt at a show, as stupid as that sounds. We got to talking and he had heard of antioch arrow and I had heard of Bitch Magnet so he offhandedly suggested playing. He already knew kevin for a while before that.

I know that some of you guys have been in previous bands that have received notoriety. How do you see this band in relationship to you past ones? An evolution? A complete break?
I don't think this band really resembles any of our past bands. I can really only speak for me though. I think it was partly because there was so much time in between any of my serious projects that my tastes and wants for what I wanted to do musically had just meandered away. I do not listen to much hardcore anymore so if I was doing something like antioch arrow it would be really hollow. I am sure there is some common thread for all of us you could find but the approach is different here.

I think every member of the band is not from NYC but you started here. Do think being in NYC is important to you as a band creatively?
New York is a real double-edged sword in that it affords you the opportunity to see almost any band touring the U.S. On the other hand it costs so much just to practice here and get your stuff to and from the show. The other obstacle which is just as formidable is the fact that this town is a real music industry town second only to L.A. So there are huge amounts of really terrible bands trying to make it in the industry instead of trying to really do something interesting. It makes it hard to get shows sometimes. There is tons of really pandering crap here to wade through.

I see Coptic Light as some kind of collision between chaos and clarity... a really really loud collision. How would you guys describe what you do?
It is interesting because every bit of our songs has come really organically. We improvise a lot at practice, sometimes for hours on end. We have just strung some of the bits together into songs. It was not a contrived thing stylistically. We have easily 100 hours of tapes from practices which we have never touched. Our approach is somewhat analogous to can in that we string things together that come out spontaneously. Style wise we resemble them none though. I think we want to leave all avenues open as far as what we want to do in the future. I hope it never enters the realm of routine or redundancy.

Any plans for the future, recording in the near future?
The future hopefully includes some recording. A label would help too. We want to get the songs we have down so we can go on to new stuff and forget about the older songs. I truly don't understand how people can be in a band 10 years or more and constantly play old songs. Think how many times the stupid rolling stones have played satisfaction or any of their old, old songs. I find it hard to believe that they don't groan at the thought of it. Perhaps the large sacks of cash backstage soothe them. X