English doom metal legends My Dying Bride have confirmed they’ve officially parted ways with longtime vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe. The news follows less than a year after the band brought in Swallow the Sun’s Mikko Kotamäki to take the microphone for their 2025 tour dates and scrapped the remaining 2024 shows. On Thursday (9th), the band issued a statement:
“My Dying Bride have decided to part ways with vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe. Please understand that this decision does not come lightly, hence our initial and painful silence while we gathered our thoughts and carefully considered our response to the disengaged, eerily abandoned state we suddenly found ourselves in.
Our collective decision to move forward without him is not something we thought we would ever be forced to say, but to ensure a continued legacy for what we hold dear to our hearts, we simply have to move past this. Whilst change can be difficult, we are doing our best to bring this new chapter forward with powerful positivity.
My Dying Bride are not on hiatus, we were never on hiatus. However, we do genuinely wish Aaron all the luck in the world in his new solo endeavors.”
Guitarist Andrew Craighan previously explained to Metalirium that the collaboration with Kotamäki came after Stainthorpe distanced himself from the group and stopped communicating in 2024. Kotamäki has since fronted My Dying Bride at shows across Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Stainthorpe addressed the situation on the Iblis Manifestations podcast just three months ago, stating he had not spoken with Craighan in over a year and was unaware of the band’s decisions until he saw them perform without him. He expressed confusion over his status, adding that despite being a co-founder, he might need legal advice if new My Dying Bride material is released without him. Still, he remains hopeful that differences could one day be resolved.
Between a year of silence, a lack of communication, and two co-founding members sharing conflicting stories, this doesn’t seem like it will be the end of this unclear saga. We’re also not sure what sparked Craighan’s decision to make a public statement about Stainthorpe no longer being in the band. If it’s true that neither of them has spoken, this may have rattled the cage even more between whatever strife or differences had started in the first place. According to Setlist.FM, Metal Insider saw the last live performance of My Dying Bride with Stainthorpe behind the microphone at 70000tons of Metal 2024. It was dark, foggy, depressing, and beautiful. Hopefully, some resolution will happen, or a statement from Stainthorpe confirming the split, or at least acknowledging it.
It also seems the announcement came while Stainthorpe is busy on the road in Europe supporting Paradise Lost with his new project High Parasite, whose debut album, Forever We Burn, was released in September 2024 via Candlelight/Spinefarm. My Dying Bride’s most recent album, A Mortal Binding, arrived in April 2024 (read our review here), right around the time when everything publicly unraveled.
