Three Days Grace [ tickets ]'s success with the song "I Hate Everything About You" may seem to outsiders like it happened overnight, but it's been a decade in the making.

Vocalist-guitarist Adam Gontier, bassist Brad Walst and drummer Neil Sanderson began playing music at age 14 in Norwood, Ontario. They dabbled with bands until 1997 when they formed Three Days Grace and got serious about music.

After moving to Toronto, the band met former Big Sugar drummer Gavin Brown, who went on to produce Three Days Grace's angst-filled, self-titled major-label debut for Jive Records, which was released on July 22. "I Hate Everything About You," the first single, travels from desperate yet melodic vocals to an acerbic chorus.

The band recently added a second guitarist, Barry Stock, to free up Gontier at live shows.

Gontier took the time to talk to liveDaily while his tour bus awaited inspection at Disneyland prior to a recent show with Trapt [ tickets ] and Smile Empty Soul [ tickets ] at the theme park's House of Blues venue.

liveDaily: The single "I Hate Everything About You" has really taken off. Are you surprised at how quickly it's happened?

Adam Gontier: We've been working on it for a long time. It's a nice payoff. Back home in Canada things are going really well. In Toronto, it gets quite a bit of radio play. We put a heck of a lot of time into the record. To finally see it being played, it's pretty cool.

How much time did you put into the album?

We spent about six months. We spent a couple months in Boston, then we moved to Woodstock, NY, and we finished the record there.

You've been together since you were 14. How has the band evolved since then?

I think mainly we just sort of matured in our songwriting. When we first started, we were all pretty young and everything, so we weren't too focused on writing good material. Once we spent a little bit more time thinking about what people like to listen to, we started writing better stuff.

Is most of the material on "Three Days Grace" newer songs?

We had a lot of material before we did the record. We met up with the producer, Gavin Brown. He listened for the parts he thought were great. We had most of the stuff written before we did the record.

Reviews have compared you to Kyuss and Sunny Day Real Estate. Would you say those are fair comparisons?

Yeah, I'd say so. We're all pretty big Sunny Day Real Estate fans, and a couple of us are into Kyuss. Those are definitely influences on us for sure. We're all influenced by different people from, like, Nine Inch Nails to Tool to--I'm a big Jeff Buckley fan. Our influences vary, which is for the better, I think.

How has your experience been working with Jive, a label primarily known for its work with teen acts like Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync?

It's actually pretty cool. One of the reasons we went with Jive was because they don't have a lot of rock bands. For us, we seem to get a little bit more attention than [from] a label that would have been stacked with a bunch of different rock bands and a bunch of different rock records coming out at the same time. Jive was really into working a rock record. They hadn't had many of them. That's kind of why we went with them.

Have you met any of your labelmates yet?

Not too long ago we ran into Britney Spears. We did a showcase for a bunch of international Jive reps. We had guys from Germany and Australia who came to New York to see a few different Jive artists. Britney Spears was accepting an award. Right after she came off stage, I shook her hand and introduced myself. We [also] went to a Justin Timberlake record release party. We ended up hanging out with him. He's pretty down to earth.