Hawthorne Heights: This Is Who We Are — Hawthorne Heights

"This Is Who We Are" is the song that opens Hawthorne Heights' second album, If Only You Were Lonely, and its video is one of the clearest pictures of what the Dayton, Ohio, band looked like at their peak. It's fast and loud, and it's built for a room full of people shouting the words back.

The album it opens

Victory Records released If Only You Were Lonely on February 28, 2006. The band recorded it in September and October 2005 at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, with producer David Bendeth. Dan Korneff and John Bender engineered it, and Ted Jensen mastered it at Sterling Sound.

The album followed The Silence in Black and White, the 2004 debut that MTV turned into a hit on the back of "Ohio Is for Lovers." Alternative Press reported that the debut had sold more than 720,000 copies by early 2006. Expectations were high, and the band met them. If Only You Were Lonely debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart. It spent 17 weeks on the Billboard 200 and remains the band's highest-charting album. The RIAA certified it gold in March 2016.

It's a concept album about a long-distance relationship. "This Is Who We Are" sets the tone in the first minute.

The song

The lineup was singer and guitarist JT Woodruff, guitarists Micah Carli and Casey Calvert, bassist Matt Ridenour and drummer Eron Bucciarelli. Calvert also screamed, and on this record his screams are mostly saved for the end of songs.

The album leans on three guitars playing harmonies at once, which drew comparisons to Iron Maiden. Critics also noted the punk in some tracks, and named "This Is Who We Are" as the example. AllMusic's John D. Luerssen wrote about "the riotous punk of 'This Is Who We Are,'" which he said was "painted with blood-curdling screams." He credited the band's "three-axe attack" and Woodruff's "distinctive pipes."

The song was out in the world before the album was. It was one of three new songs the band debuted on the Never Sleep Again tour in late 2005 with Bayside, Silverstein, Spitalfield and Aiden. The other two were "Light Sleeper" and "Where Can I Stab Myself in the Ears." Footage from that tour went onto This Is Who We Are, the band's first video album, which Victory released on January 10, 2006. So the title came first on a DVD, a month and a half before the song appeared on a record.

Where the band came from

Hawthorne Heights grew out of A Day in the Life, a Dayton band Woodruff formed in 2001 and named after the Beatles song. That group put out a demo, Four Bullets for One Girl, which sold its 500 copies in two months, then an album on Confined Records and a six-song EP in the winter of 2003. After that, everyone but Woodruff left. He rebuilt the band, and Ridenour came up with the new name after driving past a Hawthorn Inn & Suites on his way to work. He added an "e" and the word "Heights."

The debut was recorded in about four weeks and sold slowly at first. Then the "Ohio Is for Lovers" video, directed by Shane Drake, started getting MTV airplay, and radio followed. It became Victory's best-selling debut. By the time the band went back into the studio with Bendeth, they were no longer a local act. If Only You Were Lonely was the record that had to prove the first one wasn't luck.

The success brought trouble too. In August 2006, a few months after the album came out, the band announced it had left Victory Records, citing a lack of royalty payments. A long legal fight followed before the two sides made peace and the third album, Fragile Future, came out on Victory in 2008. "This Is Who We Are" was recorded and filmed just before that break, when the band and the label were still riding the same wave.

The video

The band filmed the video on the road. It was shot at the Minneapolis stop of the Black Clouds and Underdogs tour on April 14, 2006. That was Fall Out Boy's North American arena tour, and Hawthorne Heights were on it from March to May. The video went online on May 25, 2006.

"Saying Sorry" was the album's lead single, and its video had premiered through AOL Music in January. "This Is Who We Are" took a different route. It was filmed in front of an arena crowd, on one of the biggest tours the band had played.

It's also one of the last music videos of the original five-piece. Casey Calvert died on the band's tour bus in Washington, D.C., on November 24, 2007, at 26. The medical examiner ruled the death accidental. If Only You Were Lonely was his last album with the band. Watching him on that Minneapolis stage now carries a weight it couldn't have had in 2006.

What it meant to the scene

In 2006, emo and post-hardcore had moved from basements to arenas. Hawthorne Heights were a big part of that. That year they toured with Emery, Anberlin, June and Bleed the Dream in February and March, then with Fall Out Boy, then through Canada with Story of the Year and Anberlin, before headlining the Nintendo Fusion Tour in the autumn. Emery and Anberlin were two of the defining bands of the Tooth & Nail world, so Hawthorne Heights fans and Christian rock fans often ended up at the same shows.

The song has stayed in the set. When Hawthorne Heights played The Gov in Hindmarsh, Adelaide, on January 23, 2024, they opened with "This Is Who We Are," ahead of "Hard to Breathe," "Pens and Needles" and "Ohio Is for Lovers."

The band returned to the album in 2021 with If Only You Were Lonely XV, a re-recording for its fifteenth anniversary. And in April 2026, they brought the original back to Australia. Destroy All Lines promoted the If Only You Were Lonely Australian Anniversary Tour, with Armor For Sleep as main support. It started at Magnet House in Perth on April 22 and came to The Gov in Adelaide on Friday, April 24, with Armor For Sleep and Tapestry as special guests. Then it went to Melbourne's Croxton Bandroom, Sydney's Manning Bar and the Brightside Outdoors in Brisbane on April 28.

Why it still works

Not every song from 2006 has aged well. Reviews of the album were mixed at the time, and some critics found it overdramatic. But "This Is Who We Are" was never trying to be subtle. It's a fast, shouted opener from a band that had just sold hundreds of thousands of records on an independent label. The video catches that band on stage, playing to an arena crowd.

In Adelaide in 2024, it was the first song of the night.