Finish Ticket. Courtesy.

Bay Area pop quintet Finish Ticket was spending one of a handful of precious days at home— the band has been touring nonstop over the past year.

Guitarist Alex DiDonato (a founding member), as well as drummer Gabe Stein and keyboardist Nick Stein were happy to share. Read pieces of my interview in a story about the band that previews Live 105’s Not So Silent Night as well as a preview of the Outside Lands Music Festival (later this summer). Catch them at Amoeba in San Francisco as well. But right here, you can learn much more about the band, and their interests outside of music.

I believe you got together in 2008. At what point did you want this to become a full-time gig?

Alex DiDonato: Me and the Hoyt brothers … we started the band in 2008 when we were in high school. It was just a hobby, a really fun thing. We all love music, and we just loved playing together. It was just an after-school thing to do. We didn’t start taking it seriously as a career choice or desire until we won a Not So Silent Night competition (in 2010). We got to open for the Smashing Pumpkins and the Black Keys, and Broken Bells, Phoenix, and My Chemical Romance. It was a huge upper for us. It showed us we had a chance at doing this. We just had to persevere. That’s when we dropped out of college.

Live 105 program director Aaron Axelsen is a big fan of you guys. Should he feel bad you dropped out of college to pursue the band?

DiDonato: (Laughs). I feel great about it now. I’m sure he’s glad we did. For a while, we were kind of doubting if dropping out of college was the best idea.

What’s it like having a band with two sets of brothers?

DiDonato: It’s pretty fun. There’s a lot more bickering that doesn’t really mean anything. A bunch of bros. We’re a little family.

Where would you be if you were not doing music right now?

DiDonato: Nick is the only one who graduated from college.

Nick Stein: I’d probably have some job in San Francisco that I worked for two years to find. I tried to find a job before joining the band, and it didn’t work out that well.[Nick worked as a waiter briefly.]

Gabe Stein: I’d be a senior in college, but if I wasn’t in my fifth year in college, I’d be doing some environmental work. Music has been a focal part of our lives ever since we could play it.

What other Bay Area bands influenced your music?

DiDonato: We were going to see bands like The Matches and Audrey Sessions, as well as a bunch of bands that kind of broke out of the local scene. Some of them signed to national labels. We were really obsessed with all those bands. Picture Atlantic; they are good friends of ours. Before we were friends with them, we were huge fans. Green Day are hometown heroes for us. When we were growing up, they were releasing “American Idiot,” which fit our age group and where we were, I think. We recorded at their studio a little while ago.

Tell me something unique about each of you, in terms of hobbies.

DiDonato: We go hiking a lot. We play a lot of video games with each other.  “Super Smash Brothers” is probably our go-to video game. … We love to go outside. We love to eat burritos. That is a hobby for the band; both individually and collectively.

Where can you be found on the weekends?

DiDonato: A lot of times, we’re going to a bunch of local shows. If we’re in town, and our friends are playing, we’ll go see them at Bottom of the Hill or Rickshaw Stop. We did laser tag one time; bowling — whatever fun thing we can think of.

Gabe Stein: We go hiking a lot — any kind of regional park around here we’ll hike into.

What’s the meaning behind your band name?

DiDonato: It’s an inside joke we had when we were 15. It doesn’t really make any sense. We don’t really like talking about it because it’s really dumb.

What was it like touring with New York/Australian trio the Kin?

DiDonato: It was our first time ever on a bus tour.  We’d never experienced anything like that. We shared the bus with the guys in The Kin. It was kind of a ‘going to college situation’ where you’re put in a dorm room with people you’re going to have to spend your lives with. We were forced to get to know them really well, and they were really cool.

Gabe Stein: We got signed to Atlantic (Records) on Valentine’s Day in Chicago, and we signed on that bus.

Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.