Metric is a Canadian indie rock band. Originally formed in 1998 in New York City, they are currently based in Toronto, Ontario.
The band consists of vocalist and keyboardist Emily Haines, guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. Their full-length second album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003. Their newest album, Live It Out, was released on October 4, 2005.
Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, and Delerium.
Born in New Delhi, India, raised in Canada, and with extended family in the United States, Emily Haines grew up as a nomadic dual citizen — foreshadowing her band's own transnational identity. The daughter of avant-garde jazz musician and poet Paul Haines (best known for his lyrical collaboration with Carla Bley in the 1971 jazz opera Escalator Over the Hill), Haines settled in Peterborough, Ontario at the age of 3, and grew up in a milieu rich with experimental art and musical expression. Paul would often make cassettes of rare and eclectic music for his daughter to listen to and her early influences included Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, and later PJ Harvey. By her teens she followed her parents' footsteps by attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts. There she met Amy Millan and Kevin Drew, with whom she would later collaborate in songs for Stars and Broken Social Scene. Haines and Millan briefly formed their first band around 1990 while at Etobicoke, and with songs later written and recorded while at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1992-1993, at Toronto in 1995, and at Concordia University in Montreal in 1995-1996, Haines distributed in 1996 an early effort called Cut In Half and Double with a limited number of copies.
