Plenty of iconic bands have made the Sunshine State their home over the years, from Orlando’s Trivium, to Jacksonville’s Limp Bizkit, to Gainesville’s Tom Petty. The list of huge bands in almost every genre from the state are almost neverending. The Tampa Bay area, and in particular Tampa, are fairly well-represented as bands like Savatage, The Outlaws, Copeland, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra are from the immediate area.
Inarguably one of the biggest bands to emerge from the area, Underoath have called Tampa home for a long, long time – routinely culminating their tours at St Pete’s Jannus Landing, or other local venues. The band just filled the Yuengling Center last Friday, bringing together over 4,000 fans on the last date of their headlining tour last Friday – and they’re touring arenas with Breaking Benjamin in the fall. Which makes the revelation that there’s now a petition for the band to be honored by their hometown with a key to the city all the more relevant.
Considering their huge influence on a generation of bands, this makes a lot of sense. In the alternative music scene, this isn’t unprecedented. Last year, A Day To Remember received the symbolic Key To The City of their hometown Ocala, while Every Time I Die was commemorated by the city of Buffalo with a day named in honor of them. Also considering their monumental #2 Billboard Top 200 debut for 2006’s Define The Great Line, and the fact that they’ve continuously created evolving and challenging music, makes them more than worthy of the honor in our opinion.
