Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith met each other when they were five and six and quickly became best friends. The band started off when Ryan and Spencer were thirteen, with Ryan on guitar and Spencer on drums. They covered mostly Blink-182 songs and quickly added their friend Brent Wilson on bass. They later added their other childhood friend Trevor, who later left the band they all named “The Summer League.”
Brent Wilson met Brendon Urie at Palo Verde High School, where he asked Urie to try out to become the replacement guitarist. Impressed with his skills, they named him the new guitarist and back-up vocalist. After a couple rehearsals, they were amazed at the voice Brendon had. They decided to make Urie the new singer and to have Ryan, who was the singer/guitarist at the time, move to guitarist and back-up vocalist/lyricist. They settled on the name “Panic! At The Disco.”
To try and promote their band, they got in contact with Fall Out Boy’s bassist Pete Wentz through his LiveJournal. They gave him a link to their PureVolume, where they put up some of their demos. After listening to them, he liked what he heard so much that he took a trip out to Las Vegas to meet them. They played a song for him, and afterwards Wentz asked if they would sign with his Fueled By Ramen imprint label Decaydance.
Panic! At The Disco’s first debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was released September 27, 2005. They quickly built up a fan base on PureVolume and Myspace, holding a consistent spot in PureVolume’s top 10 signed artists. On January 17, 2006 they were featured on TRL to premiere their first music video for “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” The video later won MTV’s Video of the Year at the Video Music Awards in 2006. Their album went Platinum in August 2006.
In May 2006 the band announced that their bassist, Brent Wilson, would be leaving the band. Although it’s said that Wilson has claimed he was “fired without warning,” the band has said he started becoming distant and an unreliable band member. Jon Walker filled in for him as a temporary bassist, going on tour with them through Europe and soon became a permanent member of the band.
In early 2007, Panic! At The Disco started writing their second album, but in July 2007 they decided to trash what they’d written so far and start from scratch. Rob Mathes, the producer of the record, described the record as “the most significant music project I have done in a while in that it is young and intense, adventurous and endlessly creative. Working with these young kids has made me look at music the way I did when I discovered early records by The Who and Brian Eno-period David Bowie when I was 16. For this project I am also filled with gratitude.”
On January 9th the “!” was dropped from their name. Very soon after the band announced they would be headlining the Honda Civic Tour, with Phantom Planet, The Hush Sound and Motion City Soundtrack as opening acts.
Ryan Ross has said of their new music style, "I try to think of the person who's worked an eight-hour day, the person who gets in the car and puts on their radio. I'd like them to hear a song that makes them feel happy for three minutes rather than something that makes them more depressed than they already are. We're not afraid to write about love or being happy.” Unfortunately, in the summer of 2009 the band split in two with Ross and Walker leaving to form their own band The Young Veins. Urie and Smith have decided to continue on with Panic! at the Disco (and they brought back the exclamation point this time). Already they released the single "New Perspective" which was featured on the soundtrack for the movie Jennifer's Body. The two are currently writing their next album.