Alice Glass is the lead vocalist and lyricist of Crystal Castles.
Alice Glass was born in 1988 in Toronto, Ontario. At the age of 14 she ran away from home to live in a squat community of punks under the name Vicki Vale, yet continued going to school and also started an all-girl crust-noise band Fetus Fatale. She met bandmate Ethan Kath when they were both reading to the blind, part of community service they had to do. After going to a Fetus Fatale show, Ethan, impressed by her performance, gave her CD-Rs with 60 instrumental tracks of which she chose 5 to write vocals for. Alice Glass and Ethan Kath went to a recording studio to record the 5 songs and unknown to the band, the microphone check before the session was secretly recorded by the engineer, who later presented the band with a CD-R with 6 tracks. This 6th extra track was discovered by London UK's Merok Records who went on to release the track as the band's first vinyl single, "Alice Practice", despite Glass not knowing the track existed or what it sounded like, and named for the fact Alice was just doing soundchecks prior to starting his intended recording session.
In 2008, before the band's interview with Now Magazine, Alice disappeared and neither Ethan nor the band's manager could contact her. Crystal Castles was infamously shut down at Glastonbury 2008 after Glass climbed a speaker stand just before "Alice Practice" and was swallowed by the crowd during "Yes No".
In March 2008 Alice broke two of her ribs in a car accident. Doctors instructed her to take at least six weeks off to allow time to heal but she continued the tour, performing a twenty minute set within days of the accident.
On November 2, 2010 Alice injured her ankle during a show in Spain, where men in the crowd threw her to the ground and stole her skirt. In Tokyo on 18 January 2011, Alice fell and put strain on the unhealed ankle injury, causing her ankle to break. Against the wishes of her physicians, Alice chose to perform 5 months worth of shows on crutches instead of canceling.
Alice Glass was named the #1 Cool Icon by NME Magazine (beating mainstream artists such as Jay-Z) and responded by slandering the idea of the cool list itself. In 2011 Rolling Stone Magazine named Alice Glass one of ten icons in 20 Years of Lollapalooza moments (alongside legends such as Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, and The Jesus And Mary Chain). Alice Glass and her band Crystal Castles received the John Peel Award For Innovation at the 2011 NME Awards. Her debut album with Crystal Castles was included in NME's "Top 100 Greatest Albums Of The Decade" list at #39.