Today we’d like to introduce you to Omar Martinez.
Hi Omar, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Taken By Tides is a group that started over a decade ago as a hobby of mine. We went through a revolving door of members as we grew and learned how to play shows around South Texas, but it was never anything too serious, we were just having aimless fun. Around the pandemic, 2020, I decided to really hunker down and learn a lot more about singing, songwriting, and invested a lot into myself as an artist. Fast forward to 2024, we formed what felt like the strongest lineup we’ve ever had, 4 musicians who all had experience in their own scenes, came together to give music a good shot.
Things really felt different once we dropped our single, Ghost Vibrations. We began having bigger shows, more press, more opportunities. Then, once our Debut album released, we got to tour with a great national act, Set It Off, alongside Fame on Fire and Vana.
Today, we’re currently on the way to perform at Welcome To Rockville, it’ll be our first ever festival performance, followed by a small headlining tour of ours.
After years of honing my craft, things are finally starting to feel surreal.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road a lot of the time, but we’re very persistent, so whenever we hit some rough times, we take some time to breathe and just try to handle things as calmly as possible. I feel like every time we’ve had some momentum, things would take a turn. One of the most obvious ones was the pandemic, we couldn’t see each other, shows got cancelled, all momentum we had just sort of stopped. We really didn’t have the budget to do any sort of content to try to capitalize on TikTok yet, I feel like if we had another 1-2 years of growth prior to the pandemic, we would’ve been in that class of bands that had their big break.
Today though, it’s definitely a different game, artists aren’t breaking through as consistently through socials.
We don’t really worry much about going viral though, we don’t really see ourselves as viral artists, we’ve always connected more with our fans by playing more shows, hitting the road more, etc etc. I’ve heard of some bands not touring until they hit hundreds of thousands of listeners on Spotify. It’s far too expensive to reach those numbers as an independent artist, working 9-5s.
Every era of musicians has had it’s uphill battles, these are just the times we’re living in, but we’re not worried. I think the connection we’re making with our small fanbase is great, if things do go insane with our career, those fans will remember seeing us in a small dive bar forever.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a singer/songwriter for our band, Taken By Tides. We’re based out of Laredo and San Antonio, TX. We’re known for having emotional but heavy music, I’d like to call ourselves more Post Hardcore if anything now. I’m most proud of our persistence, the fact that we never gave up on ourselves.
I think what sets us apart is our vision, we’re not far different from other music out there, but there’s something in our chemistry that I think people can sense.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I’d like to say I was pretty outgoing, naive, friendly growing up, but over time I sort of became more introverted, stopped letting as many people in. I always loved music, I used to be addicted to playing Guitar Hero since I was like 6 years old, then at around 10 years old I picked up a real guitar. I was just always so drawn towards rock music, it wasn’t even the danger of it, I loved the theatrics of bands like My Chemical Romance.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://TakenByTidesBand.com
- Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/TakenByTides
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3g3R9lutRYQ8tnhDayhUHk
