The band was formed around the turn of 1999 and 2000, with the guitarists Peter Erdélyi and Mark Spala, and bassist Csaba Erdélyi. It took a long time to find a singer and proper drummer, and it wasn’t until 2004 when the line-up could solidify. We started playing live actively, and we played in several underground clubs in Budapest and a few other towns inside the country. The band also participated as a guest appearance in two Chuck Sculdiner/Death tribute concerts in 2003 and 2004.
In 2006 we recorded a few songs in English to promote our music outside the borders of Hungary and hopefully to find a label. This promo is called "No Contact".
In 2007 we recorded our first album titled 'Crust of Ego', which contains all our previous songs in English, some newly written stuff and a U2 cover.
This album was released in February 2008 by Nail Records, a Hungarian record label, and it is distributed throughout the whole country. We kept on playing live and besides regular club gigs, we participated in some major festivals, including one with Brainstorm, Sabaton and Pagan’s Mind in Budapest, and another one called Rockmaraton in Romania, where we played with bands like Moonsorrow.
In 2009 the year started with line-up changes, new guitarist (Balázs Specker) and session-vocalist (Zoltan Pötörke) joined the band. Zoli left the band in summer, so the guitarist, Peter took on the position of main vocalist, and the band is currently finishing songs in this four-member line-up for our second album, which is due to come in the autumn of 2010, and looking for opportunities to play live as much as possible.
Ad Astra plays complex melodic metal with lots of rhythm and dynamic changes, catchy melodies and loads of heaviness, that is sometimes referred to as progressive thrash-power metal