Emily Haines

Biography

Emily Haines (born January 1974 in New Delhi, India) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboardist of the indie rock band Metric and a part-time member of the group Broken Social Scene. She also released a solo album as Emily Haines, plus an album and an EP as Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Emily is the daughter of Canadian poet Paul Haines and sister of Canadian television journalist Avery Haines. She was born in New Delhi, India, and raised in Canada. After settling in Peterborough, Onta...

Emily Haines (born January 1974 in New Delhi, India) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboardist of the indie rock band Metric and a part-time member of the group Broken Social Scene. She also released a solo album as Emily Haines, plus an album and an EP as Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton.

Emily is the daughter of Canadian poet Paul Haines and sister of Canadian television journalist Avery Haines. She was born in New Delhi, India, and raised in Canada. After settling in Peterborough, Ontario at the age of 3, she grew up in a milieu rich with experimental art and musical expression. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, and later PJ Harvey. By her teens she followed her parents' footsteps by attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA). There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in songs for Broken Social Scene and Stars.

Haines and Millan briefly formed their first band around 1990 while at ESA, and with songs later written and recorded while at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1992-1993, at Toronto in 1995, and at Concordia University in Montreal in 1995-1996, Haines distributed in 1996 an early effort, entitled "Cut in Half and Also Double", with a limited number of copies.

Haines has also ventured out into a small solo career, playing a limited number of shows with Amy Millan as the opener. Haines' act consisted of just herself (blindfolded), and a piano.

Her solo album called Knives Don't Have Your Back was released September 12, 2006 in Canada and on the 26th in the U.S.

She has contributed vocals or backing vocals to songs by Broken Social Scene, Jason Collett, Stars, Delerium, k-os, KC Accidental, MSTRKRFT, The Stills, Tiësto, The Crystal Method, Todor Kobakov. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.