Why are my if statements acting like the condition is always true?
Microcontroller pins tend to read LOW when left floating (but not always!). However, pin 1 is used to communicate with the USB-UART converter, and I believe it is set HIGH in the idle state. So assuming you are not pressing any buttons, keys 2-8 will be in the LOW state by default, but key 1 will be HIGH. Hence when defaultCase = HIGH;, the first if is triggered. When defaultCase = LOW; all if's but the first one fire up. Solution — don't use digital pin 1 (edit: avoid pin 0 and maybe 13 as well).

Edit: The answer above refers to the original code without the pull-up resistors enabled.