Thomas
was born on october 23rd 1975 in Weißenburg frankonia
(near Nuremberg). As a little boy he already was enthused
by rock music. His first memories are: he listened and
sung to songs like Highway to Hell,
Highway Star or Ace
of Spades from Motörhead.
At the age of 11 he
was at his first Deep Purple concert in Munich´s
Olympiahalle, where he was very impressed by Ritchie Blackmore.
Finally, it was Ritchie Blackmore that brought him to
buy his first Stratocaster and a little Marshall amp at
the age of 15 to follow his idol´s footsteps.
Very fast Thomas learned
the first Deep Purple and Rainbow riffs and within a few
years he became a first class rock guitarist. His first
appearances on stage were in a school band playing Deep
Purple´s Love conquers all
and Metallica´s Enter Sandman.
In 1994 he joined his first band Session.
Session was a cover band playing
all the classic rock songs from 60´s to 90´s.
In those days he already wrote the basic idea of what
ended as Black Star on the
album.
Thomas stayed in Session until
end of 1996 and they played several gigs in their area.
In January 1997 he got a phone call from a band called
Shylock which was searching
for a lead guitarist at that time. Thomas joined Shylock
and stayed for about a year playing some gigs and biker
festivals with Shylock´s
cover music.
Frustrated from the permanently personal changes in Shylock
he decided to pause with playing in a band for a while
but again was requested by the band Blind
Fate to join them in the same year. As Blind
Fate was a band of some good musicians Thomas Pihale
decided to join them.
With Blind Fate Thomas had
lots of gigs and worked with them until 2002 when the
band split.
Thomas at that time already felt unwell as he wanted to
start realizing his own ideas instead of playing cover
music.
So after the split of Blind Fate
the time was right to start a solo project which finally
ended up as "Rainstorm Project"
with the album "Purple Eyes".
At a concert of Blackmores
Night in the romantic Rothenburg in 2003, Thomas was so
impressed by the performance of the bass player that he
asked him immediately if he wanted to join his project.
This musician turned out to be no other than producer
and songwriter Bob Curiano
who had worked with a number of big stars including the
Backstreet Boys, Mink/Willy de Ville and Natural. After
listening to some of Thomas songs Bob was excited
and agreed to play bass and coproduce Thomas´ "Rainstorm
Project". They recorded the album between
January 2004 and February 2006. Beside Bob his former
keyboarder from Blind Fate,
Tobias Schaedler and a drummer
called Heiko Lindenthal
were involved in the project.
A perfect singer was
found in Henning Schwarzhoff
from Cologne whose powerful rock voice fits ideally to
the harder rock songs. After multiple attempts Thomas
then managed to persuade his sister Sabrina
Pihale to sing the ballads on his album. Her great,
soft voice had so far only been used in the shower.
Also Andreas Edel, the singer
of Blind Fate can be heard
on the bonus track "Standing
here" which he wrote with Thomas.
For 2007 the release
of "Purple Eyes"
with all the promo work stands before.
To be continued.
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