Who (plays) what?
Tom DeLonge is the group's guitarist. Mark Hoppus plays the bass. They both share the lead vocals. Scott Raynor is the former drummer of the group. When he leaves the band in 1998, Travis Barker is the one taking over.

Starin' at the past
Back in late 1992. Tom DeLonge gets kicked out of school for playing a basket game drunk. He wanders San Diego and eventually dates Mark Hoppus's sister, Anne (which would later in 2001, release a book entitled "Tales from beneath your mom" relating the creation and history of the band). She notices common points between her brother and her date's personality, the most obvious ones being the like for imature jokes and the passion for music. She introduces one to another and witnesses "love at first sight". Tom is the foundator of the group and the one who finding Scott Raynor to be their best drummer at the time. Tom chose 'blink' because 'dixit' he likes short verbs.

Man overboard
Performing on small clubs, they were mostly on tour trying to promote their demos. In 1998, Mark and Tom grew tired of Scott getting drunk most of the time and asked him to leave. Other bands were co-headlining their gigs at the time, amongst which: the aquabats; which drummer was Travis Barker. It is unclear as to what exactly happens, but fact is that Travis leaves the aquabats and joins blink-182 (also see: The Scott story).

Meanwhile
In between 1995 and 1996, the laywer of an Irish techno band contacts the group and claims property over the "blink" bandname. He therefore asks them to change it in order to prevent lawsuits. 182 would eventually pop-out. The number has no peculiar, or maybe countless meanings (also see: Why 182?).

The neverending story
As of today, blink-182 released 6  studio  albums: Cheshire cat (1995), Dude Ranch (1997), Enema Of The State (1999), The Mark  Tom And Travis Show (Live album, 2000), Take Off Your Pants And Jacket (2001) and Blink-182 (Self-titled album released in 2003). The first two albums were published whilst Scott was still in the group. Flyswatter and Buddha were  both  unreleased  demos,  respectively done  in  1994 and  1995.  The latter  has  been  digitally remastered in 1998.

The end of the story?
After blink's second tour of Europe in 2004, they took a well deserved Christmas break, and weren't back in the spotlight until February of 2005, supposed to headline a benefit show for the victims of the tsunami that hit Thailand, Sri Lanka and a few other Asian countries very hard. Blink cancelled out of the show at the very last minute, and when Dave Navarro claimed on his website that blink-182 had split, rumours spread around the internet as wildfire. This was on February 18th, and by February 23rd, an announcement had been put up on the official site saying that blink-182 were on an indefinate hiatus. The message was taken down shortly after, and this left the fans wondering what was going on.

Nothing was said until KROQ had an interview with Travis and his wife Shanna in late February about their new reality show on MTV, Meet The Barkers. Travis said blink were taking a break, only to return and start making a new album in January of 2006. This was proved wrong later in the year, as Tom broke his silence saying that he was working on a new project called Angels And Airwaves, and Mark and Travis were working on a new project together called Plus-44. Both set for a 2006 release.

In the middle of this crazy situation, Geffen still released blink-182: Greatest Hits on November 1st, a collection of all blink's singles, plus newly recorded Another Girl, Another Planet, recorded for Meet The Barkers in December 2004/January 2005.

To this day, nothing is known about blink's future, and we may never see them play together again, but noone knows what the future holds. Only time will tell.
... taken from punkdisasters.com

Also see:
Pictures of the group
Videos of the group

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