Geoffrey William Rickly (born March 8, 1979) is an American musician, best known as the lead singer and songwriter of rock band Thursday. Rickly is also a member of hardcore punk band United Nations, and the alternative rock group No Devotion with former members of Lostprophets, and is the founder of the record label Collect Records. Personal life Rickly was born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised in Dumont, New Jersey, into a Catholic family, and attended Dumont High School, where he was a member of the band and played the tenor sax. He was raised Catholic, Rickly is a diagnosed epileptic, which has affected his ability to tour. In early 2013, Rickly was mugged in New York City, where his cell phone, iPad, wallet, credit card, rent money, and medication were stolen. In 2015, Rickly was poisoned and robbed in Hamburg, Germany, while touring with No Devotion to play at the Reeperbahn Festival. Rickly was hospitalized, causing them to cancel their concert, but recovered for a scheduled show in Paris the following day. In a 2017 interview with Spin, Rickly admitted to battling a heroin addiction that began shortly after Thursday's breakup in 2011. Following Thursday's reunion in 2016, Rickly was inspired to quit using the drug. Musical career Rickly has contributed guest vocals to many songs, including My American Heart's "We Are the Fabrication", Murder by Death's "Killbot 2000", This Day Forward's "Sunfalls and Watershine", Circa Survive's "The Lottery", and My Chemical Romance's "This Is the Best Day Ever". He also occasionally performs solo, most recently in Hoboken, New Jersey, at the Eyeball Records holiday party, performing his band, Thursday songs "Autumn Leaves Revisited" and "This Side of Brightness" acoustically. Lyrically, Rickly has been known to draw from a wide variety of influences, many of them being authors and poets. In a March 2009 interview, he cited the works of Denis Johnson, Martin Amis, Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace as being among his influences for the lyrics of Thursday's Common Existence album, which was released in February 2009. A tattoo on his forearm reads "love is love", a lyric from the band Frail; Rickly adopted these lyrics into Thursday's "A Hole in the World." The band's song, "Autobiography Of A Nation" is clearly influenced by poet Michael Palmer's "Sun." Rickly has also written, recorded and played for United Nations, an experimental powerviolence collaboration. Collect Records In 2009,