Official Bio (by Christian Liljegren)
In the beginning of 1989 I was so tired of all these things that had happened the last couple of months that I nearly decided not to sing anymore.
In late February I got a phonecall from a keyboardplayer called Richard Eriksson who he offered me to sing in his band called Exodus. The singer before me was a female singer called Josefine Torstensson. Nowadays she's performing as a soloartist and has also released a couple of albums. Their music was a very melodic kind of rock with lots of keyboards similar to bands like Richard Marx, Talk Of The Town and Alien. When I joined the band we changed the name of the band to Borderline.
The line up was:
Christian Liljegren: Lead Vocals
Richard Eriksson: Keyboards
Stefan Selvander: Guitars
David Arvidsson: Drums
Simeon Liljegren: Bass
Borderline became harder and harder and left that melodic rockstyle to be more influenced by the swedish melodic hardrockers Glory, Treat and of course Europe. We had another guy that played bass before my brother Simeon Liljegren joined the band. My brother was still in the band Razed when I asked him to join Borderline. He told me that he won't because he's a guitarplayer but then he changed his mind and joined the band and the line up was complete.
Borderline did lots of shows and some demos during 1989 and won a competiton. The first prize was to record a single. We entered the "Cutsound Studio" in Jönköping in December 1989 and recorded two songs. The A-side was sang in swedish and named "Fri" which means "free" in english. The B-side was called "Calling".
During 1990 Borderline continued to do liveshows to write songs and we had a great time. In September we recorded a three song demo on an 8 channel tape-recorder in Habo with our soundengineer Lennart Andersson. Some of the songs were: "No More Shadows From The Past", "Touch From You" and "Liberator Of Sin". Two of these songs appeared on an album 7 years later on Narnia's debutalbum "Awakening". In October David Arvidsson left the band and was replaced by Per Johansson (later Selvander).
In December we entered Edin Music Studio in Gävle to record our 2nd single. The songs were "I Can't Live Without Your Love" and "Let Me Rest In Your Arms". These two songs also appeared on the debutalbum "Awakening" with Narnia. "I Can't Live Without Your Love" is named "Heavenly Love" and "Let Me Rest In Your Arms" is the bonustrack on the japanese edition of Awakening and on the vinyl version of Awakening.
Borderline worked hard writing new songs during springtime of 1991 and we recorded a demo in April with our soundengineer Johan Thorstensson. Late springtime Per Johansson and the main songwriter in Borderline keyboarder Richard Eriksson left the band because they wanted to do other things. Today both of them play in the swedish, christian rockband Attention.
It was tough to fill their places so we decided to play more guitaroriented music. We were looking for a new drummer and a guy called Christian Eidewald joined the band, but the chemistry was not the same anymore. Since we had changed musically we decided to form a totally new band. When Borderline played together with a band called Heartcry in November 1990 they met a drummer called Mick Nordström for the first time. Mick was also working as a producer, so the single Borderline recorded at Edin Music Studio was co-produced by Mick Nordström and he was also singing backing vocals.
In October when we decided to form a 70's influenced band so we asked Mick if he wanted to join the band. He said yes and Modest Attraction was formed. Mick also toured with Leviticus during their U.S tour in 1990. We wrote a couple of songs together and went to PLC studio in Hultsfred to record our first demo of 5 songs in November 1991. One of the songs, "Action", appeared on an album released by the magazine ACM Journal-U.S. in 1992 Samuel Gustafsson's Cornerstone and Samuel Durling's Mental Destruction also appeared on that album. We did our first show in December 1991 but it was aslo the last show with the guitarist Stefan Selvander. He quit the band because he wanted to concentrate on his studies.
Biography (
Metal Metropolis)
In 1989 brothers Christan and Simeon Liljegren formed a band called Borderline, together with three other members. Two years later this band split up due to different musical opinions. Christian and Simeon wanted to go back to a more seventies oriented hard rock style. Thus they formed Modest Attraction in 1991. Not long after they were joined by Stefan Selvander (guitars, also ex-Borderline) and Mick Nordström (drums, Bengalen, Leviticus (1990 touring member)). Stefan left the band the following year, to continue with his studies. So in February 1992 Stefan Mohlin joined the band on guitar. Soon Modest Attraction began to write songs and record demos. They got signed to Viva Records, and in March of 1994 they released their first album, called 'The Truth In Your Face'. The album received very good reviews all around the world.
The band went back into the studio late 1994, and recorded a Christmas E.P, named 'Modest Christmas'. The E.P included four songs; "Modest Christmas" (a newly written song for the season), "Christmas Time" (a cover of the classic Larry Norman song), and live versions of "Feed Your Fire" and "Give You My Song" (a brand new track). The band played several live shows this year, and received attention for their seventies inspired stage show. In 1995 Modest Attraction began to write songs and record demos for their next CD. 'Divine Luxury' was released in March 1996, this time independently. Then Stefan decided to leave, and was replaced by the talented guitarist Carl-Johan Grimmark (Sentinel). In May 1996 the new line-up went to Germany for a spring tour, where they did some festival appearance together with Deliverance and their Swedish friends Charizma.
In 1997 Christian and Carl-Johan started working on what was supposed to be a a side project called Narnia. The new band was soon picked up by Pony Canyon in Asia and Nuclear Blast in the rest of the world. The success of Narnia pretty much left Modest Attraction on ice. In 2001 two of the bands songs appeared on another Christian Liljegren band-project, Wisdom Call's self titled album.