Courtney LaPlante

Courtney Stringer (née LaPlante, born February 26, 1989) is an American singer and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist of the Canadian heavy metal band Spiritbox. Born in the United States, LaPlante began singing in bands as a teenager after moving to Canada. She first gained success as the lead singer of the now-defunct American metalcore band Iwrestledabearonce. As the successor of the band's original vocalist, LaPlante recorded and performed with the band from 2012 until 2015. She left the group months after the release of their second album, Hail Mary (2015).

In 2016, LaPlante returned to Canada with longtime bandmate Mike Stringer, where the two married; they have played together in each of LaPlante's bands. Desiring to have their own creative identity following their experience in Iwrestledabearonce, the pair founded Spiritbox in 2017. They have released one studio album, Eternal Blue (2021), and several extended plays.

Early life and career beginnings
Courtney LaPlante was born on February 26, 1989 in Bangor, Maine. She grew up with her parents as the eldest of six children, among them a younger brother and fellow musician, Jackson. Her father was a college basketball coach, and her mother was a teacher. The LaPlante family moved to Alabama when Courtney was six. Growing up as part of the Catholic Church while living there, her family was considered unusual among the predominantly Protestant South. This led to her switching over to the Methodist Church, where she enjoyed singing rock-oriented music as opposed to what she was accustomed to in the Catholic Church. She first attended the Methodist Church around the age of 14 with her then-boyfriend, and realized that she "really liked people clapping and her performing" rather than the core of the religion, though she remains "fascinated by all religion or spirituality".

At the age of 15, following her parents' divorce, LaPlante relocated with her mother to Victoria, British Columbia, nearly 2,800 miles northwest of her Alabama home. Before fame, LaPlante had regular employments as a barista, a payroll clerk and a receptionist.

LaPlante's musical career began at the age of 18, when she and Jackson formed the metal band Unicron. The group started by playing music inspired by Rage Against the Machine which resulted in a sound similar to their spinoff Audioslave, but gradually gravitated toward progressive metalcore, influenced by the likes of Protest the Hero and Between the Buried and Me. It was during a show that Unicron shared with fellow Victoria-based metal band Fall in Archaea that LaPlante met their guitarist, Mike Stringer. The LaPlante siblings were impressed with Stringer's ability; after the demise of Fall of Archaea, the two recruited Stringer to play for Unicron. LaPlante and Stringer eventually formed a romantic relationship, and they became engaged around 2012. They originally planned to be married shortly thereafter, but the plan was put off for some time after LaPlante joined Iwrestledabearonce, and Stringer eventually followed her into the band. After the two left the band in 2015, they would be married in 2016. For wedding presents, the couple asked for funding for their musical endeavors, which would later become Spiritbox.

Iwrestledabearonce (2012–2015)
Steven Bradley, guitarist of the Louisiana-based metalcore band Iwrestledabearonce, announced in 2012 that the band's vocalist Krysta Cameron was pregnant, and thus abruptly departing from the band. The group was in Dallas, Texas for a show on the 2012 Warped Tour. A Warped Tour representative suggested LaPlante, and they reached out to her to ask for her to replace Cameron. LaPlante quickly flew from Canada to perform the next day. Although she was a fan of the band and the announcement had addressed her as the band's "friend", she and the band had never met or even spoken to each other prior to Cameron's departure, though several of the band's peers had shown her work in Unicron to them, likening it to Iwrestledabearonce. She would go on to play with the band for the rest of the tour, and joined the band officially later that year.

Sometime after LaPlante's first album with the band, Late for Nothing (2013), Stringer joined his partner in the band. Stringer played in place of previous guitarist John Ganey during the production of Hail Mary (2015), though Ganey's formal departure was never announced. In 2015, with two weeks of tour left, the couple decided to quit the band after completing their touring commitment. LaPlante and Stringer were no longer comfortable being the "replacement people" for the original members before them, and also desired to pursue a new creative direction. No announcement by Iwrestledabearonce was ever made on the couple's departure, and the band has remained inactive since.

Spiritbox (2017–present)
LaPlante and Stringer got married in 2016, and two weeks after the wedding, they began investing their money into recording songs for a new project. In the interim, the two returned to find regular employment; at first, LaPlante served as a waitress, while Stringer delivered pizzas. The two would later work together as data entry clerks. The project was paused while the band struggled to get signed to a record label for tour funding. On October 9, 2017, the husband and wife duo announced the launch of their band, named Spiritbox. The couple based the band in their hometown of Victoria. The band released their first full-length album, Eternal Blue, in September 2021 to very positive critical acclaim.

Musical style
LaPlante's goal for her band, Spiritbox, is to have a fluid, variable sound. She has cited Tesseract, Deftones, Kate Bush, Tool, and Amy Lee as influences; though Meshuggah is her leading example in heavy metal as a whole. She has also expressed admiration for Gojira, Björk, Beyoncé, and FKA Twigs.

LaPlante's first experience with the death growl came from listening to Cannibal Corpse at the age of five, which developed into a marked interest in harsh vocals during her early adolescence while listening to nu metal. At the age of eighteen, LaPlante laid down her screamed vocals for the first time on a breakdown of a song written by her brother. She said that it is necessary to push the boundaries of the metalcore genre by bringing modernity and diversity of vocal styles to stay relevant. Her vocal phrasing based on her musical expression, primarily rooted in contemporary R&B, would become a distinctive feature; she credits Doja Cat, H.E.R., SZA, and the Weeknd as influences to her clean singing. LaPlante's singing has received acclaim from music critics. Metal Injection's Max Morin hailed her as "one of the best vocalists in the modern metal scene", and Sam Coare of Kerrang! lauded the "skill, depth and ferocity" of LaPlante's ability to transition between growls and singing.

Iwrestledabearonce

 * Late for Nothing (2013)
 * Hail Mary (2015)

Spiritbox
Studio album
 * Eternal Blue (2021)

Extended plays
 * Spiritbox (2017)
 * Singles Collection (2019)
 * Rotoscope (2022)
 * The Fear of Fear (2023)