Workhorse Music Group described Staple Records as one of its two imprints alongside an artist management division. The Los Angeles company set out that structure on its own about page: “Workhorse is a new music group encompassing two record labels and an artist management division.”
That structure explains most of what follows. This page is built from the label’s own site as the Internet Archive captured it between 2012 and 2016, which preserves roster pages, release dates and contact details. Staple News now holds the domain and has no connection to the label.
What the label said it was for
The remit appeared in the inspected page footers: Staple Records was “focused on bands with roots in the punk, pop, post-hardcore music scene”. The parent company drew the dividing line more sharply, because the second imprint, Density Records, took the heavy end of the catalog. That division helps explain why Workhorse numbers appear on records outside Staple’s artist menu. The distinction between emo and post-hardcore is discussed through named records and musicians’ comments.
The roster grew from one act to seven
The artists menu provides dated evidence of which acts the site displayed. Its contents changed between the inspected captures, which document the menu rather than the dates contracts were signed. In April 2012 it listed a single band. By April 2015 it listed seven.
Senses Fail were there from the first capture and appeared in the later captures inspected, which is why this site’s guide to that band’s releases keeps running into Staple catalog numbers. The inspected menus subsequently added Thrice, then La Dispute and So Many Ways, Dustin Kensrue and Frank Iero’s band, and Red City Radio.
Ten releases the label listed itself
A rotating rail on the label’s December 2013 contact page carried ten titles with dates attached. It is a snapshot of a widget, not a discography, and it includes one record that predates the label’s own site.
| Release | Date shown |
|---|---|
| La Dispute, Rooms Of The House | 18 March 2014 |
| So Many Ways, Seer EP | 19 November 2013 |
| Senses Fail, Life Is Not A Waiting Room LP | 4 September 2013 |
| From Autumn To Ashes, The Fiction We Live | 1 October 2013 |
| Senses Fail, Renacer | 26 March 2013 |
| Senses Fail, Mi Amor | 22 January 2013 |
| Thrice, Anthology | 30 October 2012 |
| Senses Fail, Follow Your Bliss | 19 June 2012 |
| Senses Fail, Let It Enfold You vinyl | 15 May 2012 |
| Senses Fail, The Fire | 26 October 2010 |
The rail misspells From Autumn To Ashes as From Autumn To Ashses. The contact page it sat on also still carried its template placeholder copy, opening with “Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.” Two people were named underneath, Wayne Pighini and James Nielsen, each reachable at the parent company’s domain rather than at a Staple address.
Partnerships rather than straight signings
Two of the later announcements describe something other than a normal signing. The La Dispute page says Rooms Of The House came out through the band’s own imprint, “via their newly established label, Better Living, in partnership with Staple Records”. The Dustin Kensrue page, dated 13 November 2014, says his second solo album was expected “on Staple Records/Vagrant Records”.
Red City Radio and So Many Ways were the straightforward ones. Both were announced as a band’s “first for Staple Records”. The So Many Ways announcement of 16 October 2013 gave a detailed introduction to the act: a Chicago band formed in 2009, three EPs already out, a fourth called Seer due 19 November, six tracks, and all five members named. The Red City Radio page dated 2 March 2015 does the same for an Oklahoma City four-piece, down to the studio, the ten song running order, and a 21 April release date.
Counted a different way, the community release index for the imprint holds 130 rows across two pages. Those rows bring in names the artists menu never showed, including The Bled, The Get Up Kids, and Behind Crimson Eyes. Index rows are not releases, though. They count variants, reissues and promos separately, so the number describes a database rather than an output.
Where the record stops
The inspected label-content captures run from 28 April 2012 to 22 September 2016. After that the same domain carries other things entirely.
That gap is worth saying out loud, because the end of an inspected archive window does not establish a closing date. Nothing we read gives one. No announcement, no final release note, no statement from anyone at the company. The pages simply stop, and years later the domain served unrelated content. Our editorial standards cover how to send a correction if a primary source turns up.