Most new bands introduce themselves from inside a recording studio, where songs can be refined, repaired and reconsidered until every part lands exactly where it should. Hollow Body chose a more exposed route: three musicians onstage, an audience in the room and the tape running.

On August 27, the Kingston trio of Greg Tilson on guitar, Paul Clifford on bass and Jay Middaugh on drums will release Live at The Hotel Wolfe Island, a seven-song debut captured during the final three performances of the band's winter 2025-26 residency at The Hotel Wolfe Island.

For a relatively new act, releasing a live record first might seem backwards. For Hollow Body, it is the point.

"I love live recordings," Middaugh says. "I've made two movies' worth of them. It might be the only way to keep all the flaws and humanity that modern recording techniques erase."

The second-best time is now.

Hollow Body is new, but its members are not newcomers to Kingston music. Tilson is best known as a member of The Gertrudes and as a co-founder of the Skeleton Park Arts Festival, which celebrated its 21st edition in June. Clifford also plays bass with The Gertrudes and is Tilson's friend and brother-in-law. Middaugh is an independent filmmaker who wrote and directed the features Live in Kingston and more recently Still Alive in Kingston, and he has a long history of documenting local musicians on film.

Even so, Middaugh initially turned down the invitation to join Tilson and Clifford. He had not been in a band for a decade and thought that chapter of his life was over. Making Still Alive in Kingston, however, had rekindled his desire to perform. He eventually agreed to one rehearsal.

"It was really fun, and kind of terrifying," he recalls. "I was pretty rusty. I haven't been 'the drummer' in a band since I was in a Queen's band called The Radical Dudes back in 2004."

The project evolved as all three began contributing songs. Middaugh brought in unfinished material from years earlier, then completed it with Tilson and Clifford. Their first show, at Musiikki Café in December 2025, drew family and friends. Since then, weekly rehearsals at Middaugh's Raglan Road studio have produced a repertoire of roughly 18 original songs.

"We're all writing songs and just enjoying hanging out making music together," Tilson says.

A band rooted in the neighbourhood.

That friendship is inseparable from Hollow Body's sense of place. Tilson and Middaugh live in Kingston's Skeleton Park neighbourhood. Their families are connected, too: the members' children are friends who meet for regular Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.

Even the band's instruments carry a local history.

Tilson and Clifford both play hollow-body guitars made by the late Kingston luthier J.P. LaPlante. Tilson's instrument belongs to his father-in-law, Brant Peppley, while Clifford commissioned his LaPlante bass years ago. LaPlante's daughter, Anne-Marie, lives nearby, and her husband, Neil Bettney, designed Hollow Body's logo.

There is also one wonderfully incidental connection. LaPlante was an avid LEGO collector, and Middaugh's wife resells LEGO. His collection is now stored in the Middaughs' basement.

"It's a tight neighbourhood," Middaugh says.

The name Hollow Body nods most directly to those instruments, but Tilson likes that it leaves room for other interpretations, including a possible echo of T.S. Eliot's 1925 poem The Hollow Men.

A residency becomes a record.

The album began with a winter journey. Once a month, the band loaded its equipment onto the Wolfe Islander III and crossed the point where Lake Ontario becomes the St. Lawrence River. On the other side was Hotel Wolfe Island, an artist-run venue where Hollow Body's performances were followed by open mics hosted by Honky Tonk Happy Hour's Chris Eckert, Laura Murray and Jon McLurg.

Tilson sees residencies and open mics as essential pieces of a healthy music scene. For Hollow Body, the monthly shows created deadlines, encouraged new writing and offered a welcoming place to test songs in front of an audience.

"Being part of a thriving island arts hub has been an inspiring start for our new band," he says.

The residency also included the opportunity to work with recording engineer Jake Bury. After each of the final three shows, Bury sent the individual tracks to Middaugh, who prepared rough mixes in his Happy Baby Records studio, which doubles as the band's rehearsal space. The members compared favourites, adjusted later set lists to revisit promising songs and gradually assembled the final sequence. Middaugh then mixed the record.

The last recording night carried extra pressure. It was also Tilson's birthday, and by then the trio had settled into the room. More than half of the album's performances came from that show. The celebration even made the final cut: after the last song, listeners can hear Tilson say, "Let's eat cake!" as his children bring candles to the stage.

Keeping the flaws, finding the magic.

A live album leaves fewer places to hide, but Hollow Body was not seeking perfection. The band wanted an honest introduction to their sound and the unpredictable moments that can happen only in a room with other people.

"Performing imperfections weren't really a choice," Tilson jokes. What mattered was preserving the spaciousness and energy of the Hotel. He credits Bury's encouragement behind the recording console and Middaugh's mixing for carrying that feeling into the finished release.

Hotel co-owner and musician extraordinaire, Chris Brown, added another layer. Without previously hearing the songs, Brown joined the band on Hammond organ and Rhodes electric piano for "Broken and Used," "Start Stop Motion" and "Highway 62." Middaugh calls him "the Billy Preston of this project." Along with Sarah McDermott, Brown is also co-founder of Wolfe Island Records, an artist-run label set to release Hollow Body's debut. 

The evolution of "Highway 62" captures the residency's value. During the second show, Tilson unexpectedly called for an organ solo. Middaugh and Clifford did not know whether Brown would solo over the verse or chorus—sections with different chords and time signatures—so they dropped out and let the guitar and organ carry the moment. By the following performance, everyone understood the arrangement.

"It really came together great," Middaugh says. That single performance of the completed arrangement became the album version and the band's choice for its first single.

Looking back without standing still.

Hollow Body describes its songs through the moulds of 1990s alternative and indie rock. Listeners may hear touchstones such as Sloan, Hayden, Pixies or Mudhoney, although the members approach those influences from different directions.

Middaugh does not consciously hear the 90s connection, even though listeners repeatedly point it out. Some of his songs were first written around the late 1990s and early 2000s, making the influence less a stylistic costume than a piece of lived history.

"Even if one of us writes a song trying to ape something, the other two members' parts are likely to have nothing to do with that influence," he says. "It's going to end up as something new."

Tilson agrees that Hollow Body is still discovering its sound. The members are looking back at the music of their youth while writing from their present lives as parents of teenagers. Across the album's seven songs, car crashes both literal and figurative mingle with difficult fathers, magical children, memory and change. Tilson's "Highway 62," Clifford's "Paperweight" and Middaugh's "Love/Goodbye" cross those themes from different perspectives.

"We're getting old, but still so passionate about making this kind of music that echoes our youth," Tilson says. "I trust our music will continue to evolve, aligned with our changing lives, even while we continue to glance into our pasts."

A Wolfe Island record.

The setting did more than shape the sound. The hospitality of the Hotel, the winter ferry crossings and a room filled with musician friends all became part of the record's emotional architecture. Tilson says it would be difficult to imagine creating the same album anywhere else.

Its home on Wolfe Island Records feels equally inevitable.

"Where else could it be?" Middaugh says. "It's literally a Wolfe Island record. Chris has been so supportive, as he is with so many artists, from our first show on the island. I am grateful for this album and band to have a home on Wolfe Island Records."

For Tilson, who knows the demands and rewards of community arts organizing through the Skeleton Park Arts Festival, the label's artist-run approach is especially meaningful. He even hints that the experience has inspired rumours of a future Skeleton Park Records.

Serious music, close to home.

Hollow Body may not be chasing the traditional milestones of a young touring band, but Middaugh bristles at calling the project casual. The members have families, full lives and few illusions about fame or fortune. They are also serious about making the strongest music they can.

"I would be happy to continue trying to make the best music we can and sharing it with our community," Middaugh says.

That community-centred ambition does not mean standing still. Hollow Body is experimenting with unplugged arrangements featuring Clifford on double bass, Middaugh on classical guitar and Tilson on acoustic guitar. The trio is also planning a second live recording at The Toucan with engineer Geoff Chown. Tilson would welcome festival invitations, too, even if extensive touring is unlikely. A Skeleton Park kitchen-concert tour, he jokes, might be more their speed.

On stage, Hollow Body's arrangements keep shifting. Clifford often carries lead lines on bass while Tilson anchors the rhythm guitar. All three sing, trade lead vocals and build three-part harmonies. They also end current sets with Hayden's "Trees Lounge," swapping instruments so Clifford takes the drums and Middaugh the bass. Middaugh promises awkward stage banter, too.

For now, Live at The Hotel Wolfe Island preserves the point at which three friends became a band in public: still finding their sound, willing to leave the rough edges intact and energized by the people and places around them. Seven songs may be only the beginning. Hollow Body already has a full album's worth of additional material waiting.

The best introduction, then, is the one the band chose for itself: live, human and rooted close to home.

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You can catch Hollow Body performing on September 10, 2026 on their CFRC Live Session, at the Wolfe Island Garden Party with Cut Flowers on September 22, and twice on September 27 with The Diaries at Something Else Records and later in the day at The Toucan. Hollow Body will continue performing 5 pm-8 pm the last Sunday of every month with The Gertrudes at The Toucan on October 25, November 29, and December 27, 2026.

Posted: Aug 25, 2026