FOR BEST ALBUM “TONY WAS AN EX CON ” beating , the likes of U2 ,Snow Patrol, and Bellx1 announce live date in Belfast at the Empire Music Hall on Saturday the 4th September

When Danny O'Reilly (vocals/guitar) met Graham Knox (bass) for the first time, O'Reilly was only two weeks old while Knox had barely escaped his mothers' womb. All their lives they were surrounded by music but it wasn't until O'Reilly began writing songs at the tender age of 13 that they decided it would be cool to start a band. They recruited Terenure College school friends Conor Egan (drums) and another close friend to form Kiros and performed their first gig on a Saturday afternoon in a run-down pub in Dublin's city centre to about 10 friends. The lads were all of 15, already hooked. Their adventures as Kiros, however, were short-lived as the band broke up before they turned 18. O'Reilly, Knox and Egan, however, continued to create music but soon they began to miss the thrill of live gigging and, calling themselves Corona, they decided to start playing to anyone who would listen.

They recorded a live EP in 2004 entitled "Corona - live at the Voodoo Lounge" and to this day they still get people requesting songs that they played that night as the EP began to get burned and passed around the Dublin college scene. In 2005, they recorded their debut EP in a house in Wicklow and although it was well received and contained some songs that the band still play today, they knew that something was missing from the band's sound. Shortly after its' release they met a young man from Monkstown called Dave McPhillips (lead guitar), in a frat house in Vancouver, of all places, and were so impressed with his guitar-shredding ability that they asked him join the band. They locked themselves away in a house for weeks creating their sound and began gigging around Dublin, creating an ever-growing following. In December 2006 they sold out two shows in Whelan's purely from word of mouth and this led to the band being signed up by independent label 3ú Records.

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