The Birthday

Garage rock band The Birthday was formed in September 2005 in Japan. Founded by Yusuke Chiba, he recruited former bandmates of his previous groups Rosso and Thee Michelle Gun Elephant: Akinobu Imai (guitar), Kuhara Kazuyuki (drums) and Hirai Haruki (bass). The Birthday released their debut album, Rolliers Romantics, in 2006, and followed it up with three more albums in the span of two years: Teardrop (2007), Motel Radio Sixty-Six (2008) and Night on Fool (2008). The group attracted more attention with singles such as "Stupid" (2006), "Kiki the Pixy" (2006), "Night Line" (2007), and "Namida Ga Koboresou" (2008). The extremely prolific band continued to release album including Star Blows (2010), I'm Just a Dog (2011), Vision (2012), Come Together (2014), and Blood and Love Circus (2015). During this period, lead guitarist Akinobu Imai left the group in 2011 and was replaced by former My Little Lover guitarist Kenji Fujii. While there was a change in the line-up, the group continued to release well-received albums such as Nomad (2017), Vivian Killers (2019), Sunburst (2021) and the Core 4 EP (2022).