Pilate: at the helm of their own career.

"I always knew in the back of my mind that I was going to do music in some capacity. And going along with that; my dad always knew," Todd Clark says with meaning, "That I was going to go to university."

Although Todd studied Classical Voice at Western for a time, his first love was blues guitar. "My first album was an Eric Clapton record. I wanted to play guitar all my life, but when I came to Canada they said 'If you're going to be in the high school music department you have to sing.' I thought, 'Well this sucks,' but I think in the end I wasn't too bad at it."

Beyond the New Zealand born singer/rhythm guitarist, Pilate is: Ruby Bumrah (Bass), Chris Greenough (guitar) and Bill Keeley (Drums). Bumrah, formally trained on viola and violin, was second to join. He'd just picked up the bass and was "itching to play" in a band when he answered Todd's ad. Ruby recruited his fellow OCAD students to fill out Pilate. From there they began playing gigs in Toronto once or twice a month and recording on their own.

Their self produced 1999, six-song EP For All That's Given Wasted is what got the industry's attention and put Pilate in the position to ink a deal with Maplemusic and record the full length Caught By The Window. Now, with demand generated by "Into Your Hideout" spending 23 weeks on MuchMusic they have three cross-Canada tours under their belts and are showing no signs of slowing up. Clark remains modestly cautious. Of the first single's success he says, "It seemed to do well I think ..."

Bit of an understatement that, but Todd is low key about his talents in general. "I had a hard time even considering myself a musician for a long time and I don't really consider myself, at this point, a songwriter either. To me it's always been about melody-people having an ability to write something that makes you feel something. I would hope that through experience and all the people that I've liked in terms of musician and bands all my life that I ... I got an understanding of what I liked about melody and hoping that in some way I'm recreating something that other people find interesting as well."

Although he enjoyed singing and the music he was studying, he didn't find exactly what he was looking for in music school. The experience did fuel his desire to take what he'd learned, make his own music and have his own say. It's the reason he started Pilate.

Normally the very last question I'd want to put to a band would be whether their name has any significance-it's the oldest and, possibly dumbest question in the …