“We'd show up at a club and the local [Goth] scene kids would be there. They'd get in early because they knew the people putting on the event or whatever. It would be like this taking over. We were on tour going from show to show and these scene kids would take over the backstage and we would be pushed off to the side in the corner. It was this weird thing where we're there to play a show and they didn't want us there.
During the Stark Corner tour, back in that day everything was 'snail mail'. He [Mike Vanportfleet] used to get handwritten letters from people. He answered every single letter that he ever got (sometimes he'd send out cassettes). There was a girl that he was writing to a lot and she's like, "I'm going to be at your in-store". So he's at the In-Store, and there's this other guy hanging out with him that's mega Goth. And here's Mike sitting there with his plain white t-shirt and jeans and they're sitting at this table. So, the girl comes up and starts talking to the other guy saying, "Oh my god, I can't believe we're finally meeting. I bought you these vintage postcards" and gushing about this and that. And the guy is like, "I'm sorry but this is Mike". She literally dropped the cards, turned away, and never spoke to him [Mike] again.
These are the kinds of things we'd experience. I can remember so many times playing in these uber cool Goth clubs. We would start our music before we went on stage because we had a long intro. We would just stand out in the crowd. I remember in Columbus [Ohio], we were standing in the crowd and people were looking at us like, "who the hell are you? You don't fit here". Then we walked on stage and you physically could see their faces go "Oops!".” — Tara Vanflower of the band Lycia
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