Forensic evidence

Waiting to take the stage at The Loose Moose, lead singer Cody Witt shakes his head in wonder. Of all things, a bachelor party is somehow preventing the band from taking the stage. Strange, but not unusual.

“There’s always something weird at our shows,” he says, flashing a determined grin. The delay makes no difference to him. “It may be intimate,” he says, “but we’ll still play like rock stars!”

And Witt isn’t lying—he’s no hipster-rock houseplant. He hardly stands still, instead practically skating across the parquet stage floor through the entire set, his checkerboard Vans flashing like strobes in the dim light.

Witt became the band’s singer pretty much by default. Having a wide musical background in a variety of instruments, including woodwind, Witt was the natural choice among his band mates. Guitar-slinger Kevin Jones nods his head in agreement.

Watching these guys perform, it’s clear they get lost in their music—almost to the point of forgetting the audience.

Drummer Brandon Reiff sports a Rancid T-shirt right up to the point that he starts hitting the skins and shirks it off like a distraction. Reiff admits he makes an effort to break his drum heads at every show.

On bass and keys, Jesse Gurley is in the same other world, his hair falling over his eyes and flip-flopped feet tapping out the rhythm.

Jones describes the band’s sound as a “dancy, grooving style” and somehow, as the guitar blends with Witt’s vocals and Gurley’s pleasantly crunchy bass lines, they achieve just that.

“We prefer playing house parties,” Gurley explains, going on to describe a party where a police officer, in an attempt to stop the band, was struck accidentally in the head by his bass. Gurley had been playing with his eyes closed and hadn’t even seen her.

Fingerprints Lie has been together for longer than the guys can really agree on, though Reiff is a recent addition. Jones, Gurley and Witt all went to high school together, and Fingerprints Lie, formerly known as This Silent Symphony, simply evolved naturally out of their friendship. Drawn together by similar musical tastes, including a love for Saves The Day and a mutual hatred for screaming rock lyrics, they sought to form a band untouched by the “scenesters” of their peers.

They are confident, excited and optimistic about their future as a band. Their music is hard and loud yet sort of dreamy. They explain that their name is a reference to the concept that “nothing is as it seems.” True, but with these guys the opposite goes: They are four college kids who really do just love to rock. And that is neither strange, nor unusual.