For them, music was never just about playing around – it was always about something more.

Meet Chris Lyons (guitar/voice) & Andy Smith (drums) of Heartbeat Hotel, a band that formed in 2008 but has really been, in one form or another, simmering for years. Music was always more than just partying, they say; since falling in love with playing as a band in high school, the guys always had a bigger picture in mind.

“We never just jammed,” says Smith. “I mean, we did if we were drunk.” He cracks a smile as Lyons bursts into laughter.

“I never just wanted to jam,” Lyons says. “When I got my first electric guitar, THAT was jamming. In my room alone, with a distortion pedal, going, ‘Oh my God, this is LOUD!’ But no, playing together with people was always about making a project.”

Their determination to create led to multiple band attempts (Lyons and Smith even moved to Peterborough, Ontario for a year with a previous group in order to accommodate a member who was studying at Trent University),

and finally found solid ground in Heartbeat Hotel. The guys all grew up outside of Toronto but have called it home since 2006. “It’s a great place to learn how to be a band,” says Smith.

Part pop, part shoegaze, but wholeheartedly likeable, Heartbeat Hotel – considered by its members to be more of a studio band than a live one – is your good looking, nerdy friend; you know, the one who’s smart but shy about it, who’s obsessed with reading Wired Magazine and also loves hip-hop music, who plays around on the computer for an hour and somehow produces a really catchy beat that you put on repeat and play drinking games to.

“There’s no word that accurately describes our music,” Lyons says. “Every word is tainted. Pop makes you think of Lana Del Rey and stuff, and we don’t sound like Lana Del Rey.”

“I don’t mind when people say that,” Smith says, cracking another smile and sending Lyons into laughter once again. The guys, who are in their mid-twenties – friends since high school – seem incredibly different, and perhaps that’s what makes them so compatible.

Smith is reserved, soft-spoken; his words are carefully chosen. Lyons, on the other hand, speaks with a voice that commands attention; he erupts into boyish laughter like a kid on Christmas. Both are engaged but in different ways, and together as Heartbeat Hotel, they’ve created a project that has engaged the Toronto indie music scene.

“I haven’t come across a lot of negative stuff,” says Smith of press on the band. “It’s got to happen eventually, right?”

“I have to say, from a lot of the stuff I’ve seen, positive and negative is kind of blurry sometimes,” Lyons says. “Sometimes it’s just good that people are talking about it.”

“It makes me nervous, really,” says Smith. “The thought of it all being positive means we’re not gonna live up to someone’s expectations.”

But perhaps the biggest expectations for Heartbeat Hotel emanate from the band itself. What comes across at first as insecurity is really just a testament to their work ethic; though proud of the art the produce, they are never fully satisfied with it. The bar is always set a little higher.

“I think we’re always scared that we didn’t do as good a job as we possibly could have,” says Smith.

“Satisfaction is kind of like a myth anyways,” Lyons says. “You keep trying to pursue it and attain it but it’s always the carrot in front of the horse kind of thing. And that’s not a bad thing.”

“It’s motivating,” says Smith. “To be satisfied we have to just keep making records, not thinking too much beyond that. I mean, we just released one; we’re antsy to make another one. But we should technically feel satisfied. I’m actually pretty satisfied.”

The record Smith refers to is Intae Woe, a collection of six tracks that deserve to be heard. Though recorded in just six days, the album is concise, friendly and thoughtful. It is the band’s second LP, the first being Fetus Dreams (which you can download for free; they also have an EP called CoughDrops that you can name your price for). They released Fetus Dreams – touted by Chromewaves as the best free complete download of its year – for no cost because, they say, they were virtually unknown at the time.

Now that they’ve created a buzz, they hope people will buy Intae Woe (which is being sold for only $5).

The guys hope their music is “something that [people] can live life to,” Lyons says. “There’s a lot of shit that you go through and a lot of it’s weird and music always, I don’t know, I find that music always helps people get through whatever the hell they’re going through. So no matter what that is, if our music can be there somewhere, I think that’s cool.”