Starset released “My Demons” as a U.S. digital single on October 24, 2013. The song reached radio before the band had even held its first rehearsal. Founder Dustin Bates had worked out the recordings and their science-fiction setting first; assembling musicians to take that material onstage came afterward.
That unusual order involved a substantial personal commitment. Bates told Mike Ragogna in a 2014 HuffPost interview that he had paid for recording and marketing before Starset had a label. He believed the material had a chance, and was prepared to spend his own money getting it heard. Producer Rob Graves helped him develop the orchestral and electronic layers into the cinematic arrangements he envisioned. Bates described the finished album as broadly faithful to his original plan, even though the recordings had evolved along the way. His advice to other musicians in the same interview was straightforward: “The song is the most important piece of the equation.”
Graves’ contribution went beyond adding scale. Speaking with Media Mikes, Bates explained that some songs began with melodies and lyrics, while others started with music that he eventually discarded and rebuilt to fit the cinematic approach. The orchestral arrangements involved an actual quartet, giving the record live string performances alongside its programmed elements. Bates wanted the effect of a science-fiction film score made by a rock band. After “My Demons” began attracting positive radio responses, putting together a band and finding a label became immediate priorities.
The elaborate story surrounding Starset had an emotional purpose, too. In an interview with Full Metal Jackie for Loudwire, Bates said he began incorporating the Starset Society narrative into the record in early 2013. Its future technology and warnings about humanity gave him a larger fictional world to write within, but he wanted the songs to retain something listeners could recognize in their own lives. The struggle to overcome adversity mattered as much as the machinery and mythology. He described writing on those two levels as an opportunity to make individual songs relatable while advancing the wider story.
The “My Demons” video gave that world a visual form. Nikola Tesla appeared in its narrative, drawing on an account of the inventor detecting what he believed could be an extraterrestrial signal. Bates explained to Loudwire that Starset used that historical material as a starting point for its own story. Tesla’s place in the video was part of the band’s expanding fiction.
The debut album, Transmissions, followed through Razor & Tie on July 8, 2014. “My Demons” continued climbing after the album arrived, reaching No. 5 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart that October. It had taken 41 chart weeks to enter the top five, a climb Billboard later identified as the longest in the chart’s history. Radio success had developed gradually, and another audience was finding the music through videos the band hadn’t made.
In a 2016 Billboard feature, Dan Rys reported that gaming and anime communities were setting their own videos to Starset’s songs. Razor & Tie co-founder Cliff Chenfeld described that activity as an organic development rather than a planned campaign. “My Demons” was central to it: Billboard counted 285.4 million YouTube views associated with the song since September 2014, compared with 16.2 million for its four official uploads combined. Fans were taking the cinematic music Bates and Graves had built and placing it inside stories of their own.
