Austin Steele says Unwritten Law frontman Scott Russo would invite the 16-year-old singer/guitarist and his band over to record at his home studio. “I knew his daughter Cailin through [Rancho Peñasquitos] high school. She brought him our CD. He became a mentor to us. He was our early producer.”
When Steele later formed Super Groupie, Cailin, who has appeared in Justin Bieber music videos, added vocals to their track “Say You Want Me,” a song that got 41,000 YouTube visits.
Super Groupie's song “Lightning” appeared on the soundtrack of MTV’s Washington Heights in 2013, and they released one album in summer 2014, before Steele moved on to launch Creature Canyon with guitarist Ryan Amyot and bassist Elliot Ramsey (both ex–Viva Apollo members), alongside L.A. drummer Kyle Victoria. Ramsey was later replaced by Aaron Lund, and keyboardist Luc Fralic was added to the lineup.
Creature Canyon's May 2016 EP Life I Know -- recorded with engineer Bryan Zullo at Studio West, Pacific Beat, and Steele Studios -- was promoted with a single for the title track that was named the 91X Local Break song for March 2017. The track, mixed and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer Alan Sanderson (Rolling Stones, etc.), was also shot as a video by director Mitchell Harris.
“You have to have videos,” Steele told the Reader. “YouTube is everything. My buddy Mitchell Harris helped us direct ‘Life I Know.’ We both went to Westview High School [near Rancho Peñasquitos]. He was trying to progress his career as a director and we needed the help. Andrew Rowley hit us up to do a Red Trolley video in January [2017]. He’s from P-Q, too.”
Creature Canyon won a $2000 second-place prize at the 2017 San Diego County Fair’s battle-of-the bands contest. A seven-song EP was released the following year, Did You Want That.
The band's first new song since the pandemic began, "Pressure," was released in early 2022. It was followed by a new single for "Mirrors," released via Gnu Roam (Kartel Music Group), with a music video directed by Christian Almazaan. "Writing and recording 'Mirrors' was a journey for us both sonically and personally as a band," says the group in a press release. "Each member brought their innermost struggles into the songwriting to help refine the lyrical content, which eventually shaped the overall narrative of the song, and manifests in the recurring line of the chorus 'It's the only thing I see, I'm my own worst enemy.' 'Mirrors' felt like a place for each of us to experiment and express ourselves on the track without judgement. The finished product is one of our favorite pieces we've ever put together as a group."
Production collaborators on the track include Christian Lum (Private Island), recording engineer Mike Schuppan (Foster The People, Young the Giant), mixing engineer Jordon Silva (Vance Joy, The Avett Brothers), and mastering engineer Brian Lucey (Cage The Elephant, Arctic Monkeys, The Black Keys).
Early 2023 saw the release of a new single called "Impatient."