Why the name “Sanctus Real?
” Matt Hammitt: *laughs* Our drummer’s responsible for that. We pin it on him everytime. He was actually looking up another word in the dictionary and came across “sanctus” and he really liked the fact that it just meant “holy” – it’s like a hymn of praise. He’s like “Man, that’s a cool idea.” But we didn’t realize the way it was pronounced, which is “sng(k)-ts.” So we’re like, “ah, let’s just say ‘sang-tus'” And then we tacked “real” onto that. It’s something that our guitar player who we had for the first few months wanted to do and it means just being real – just relating to kids. And being up front and not trying to put on a face or an image and just being who we are. • JfH: How did the band get started? Matt: Actually, Steve here is the only non-totally original member, but he’s been with us for about three and a half years. The other three of us started with another bass player in high school in November, 1996. We actually started out playing at our high school chapel services be
