In a new interview with music journalist Matt Mills of the Heavy Stories podcast, HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale reflected on the group’s early days in the late 1990s when the music she and her bandmates created was described by the Patriot-News as “classic rock” with “a wholesome message for the American teenager, driven by faith in God”. She said: “Since I was little, we would go to church — we would go to Presbyterian church. Our parents wanted us to have good morals and all. And we did that up until — I think right after the band started. We kind of lost our taste in religion — not our faith in there is something out there that is out of our control and feeling that type of spiritual presence.”

She continued: “I was going to a Christian school at the time, shortly after we started the band. And I would get so much… I got called in the principal’s office because I was sharing our songs and they didn’t say ‘Jesus’ on it enough — that kind of thing. And we were getting so much hell from not even — the kids were bad enough, but the adults were really just kind of bugging us with this. And when I started seeing some of the hypocrisy that goes into religion versus wanting to follow the 10 Commandments, it started kind of clicking something in my brain where, like, there’s something more than we as humans believe is religion or that blanket of that. And so we kind of stopped doing that. But then there would be church gigs that we would do that maybe weren’t necessarily our community, but, like, ‘Hey, they want you to play these three songs. We’ll give you free lunch and 50 bucks,’ that kind of thing… We kind of got ourselves out of that community, but it kind of followed us around for a while.”

Asked if it was a hard transition getting out of that community and transitioning to doing different types of gigs, including country fairs, Lzzy said: “Yeah. I think that we knew we were getting ourselves out of certain circles and losing some friends because of it, that kind of thing. But for whatever reason, the magic of music was so important to us, it was something that probably brought me closer to a God than when I was in church. And so I think it was one of those things where it’s, ‘I have to follow this through because it’s helping me learn more about myself than Bible study does.’ And so, yeah, I wanted to follow that rabbit hole and see where that went.”

After Mills noted that HALESTORM is still occasionally called a “Christian rock” band in some circles, Lzzy said: “It’s so funny you said that, because for the first time in a while I was reminded of that. My friend called me up. She’s, like, ‘I just put on Pandora and I’m with a bunch of the moms and the church friends. So I’m, like, ‘Hey, Siri, play Christian music.” And she said (HALESTORM‘s) ‘Freak Like Me’ came on. And I’ve known this friend for years. She’s, like, ‘Did you guys use to be a Christian band?’ It is funny how that still follows me around.”

Lzzy continued: “I’m not ashamed of that, I’m not denying that. I think that I very much enjoy being able to live on both sides of the coin, in both a religious upbringing and into a spiritual upbringing, in the secular world. And I love having both of those perspectives because I believe that a lot of the things that I learned were very good ideas. It’s when man’s hands kind of get all into it and start twisting into greed or gain versus, ‘Hey, loving one another is a really good idea.'”