MIXTAPES: MISPR!NT x LOSING STREAK
Punk’s Not Dead - At Least, Not in Ontario
Born in a Hamilton basement in 2022, Losing Streak crashed into the Ontario punk scene like a shopping cart hurled down a stairwell. Noisy, reckless, and wired harder than that Red Bull‑addicted skate rat at your local park.
They play with the urgency of those who grew up bombing hills on useless wheeled wooden toys, where every scar’s a badge and every riff’s a middle finger. No polish, no corporate gloss - just raw‑nerve hooks and basement‑show energy that hits with sweat and adrenaline. Mispr!nt linked up with the band to talk origin stories, their 2025 album drop, live‑show chaos, and how punk keeps clawing its way forward in Ontario.
“Brixton is a 16 year-old who was raised on punk rock and skateboarding. His dad, Rob, is a seasoned musician. Together they wrote some songs and recruited some other guys to help.”
Losing Streak, Left-Right: Ryan Laflamme Bass, Charlie Berger, Vocals, Rob Polifroni, Drums, Brixton Polifroni, Guitar.
Mispr!nt: So, Hamilton basement 2022… What was the spark? Boredom, rage, or just too many amps lying around?
Losing Streak: Brixton got his first guitar at 11, smack-dab in the middle of the pandemic. Having a lot of time in the house gave him the opportunity to really learn how to play guitar, and he got real good, real fast. Rob had always had a bunch of his old music gear stored in the basement from his time playing drums and guitar in a ton of bands back in the day, so once Brixton expressed an interest in jamming, Rob dusted off the old gear.
They started jamming out covers. Rob and Brix even started a YouTube channel called Peppers Play the Hits where they posted videos of themselves playing covers of well-known punk rock songs.
Brixton and Rob in 2023.
As Brixton got more comfortable, he started writing his own riffs with Rob, eventually forming those into songs. Once they had written a handful of tunes, they decided they wanted to flesh out those songs with bass and vocals and maybe even play a show or two. Charlie had been the singer in a couple of punk bands with Rob back in high school, so he asked Charlie to be involved and contribute vocals/lyrics. Ryan had also played in bands with both Charlie and Rob in the past and was a natural fit on bass.
Now there are even more amps lying around, but they’re no longer collecting dust.
Mispr!nt: Your sound’s got that scraped‑knuckle urgency. What’s fueling that chaos?
Losing Streak: Brix is the fuel. He directs the overall sound of the band, loves fast punk rock and brings a youthful energy to the songs that drives us older guys, bringing us back to a time in our lives when energy and urgency was the name of the game. When we play live, us older guys all become 16 again…16-year-olds with wives, mortgages and bad backs.
Losing Streak playing the Evelyns album release show in Niagara Falls, January 2026. Photo by: Lucy Bishopp.
Mispr!nt: Ontario’s punk scene feels like it’s clawing back from the grave. What’s keeping it alive for you guys?
Losing Streak: Most of us are probably not as up to speed as you, but music scenes ebb and flow. Back when the older guys in the band were coming up (the mid-to-late 90’s), the punk scene in Ontario was massive. You could easily get 300 kids showing up to an All-Ages show of exclusively local acts on a Wednesday night. Even in the subsequent ‘quieter’ years, there was always a scene, you just needed to know where to look.
Today, there continues to be a thriving (but small) punk rock scene in Ontario, with some amazing bands, often made up of folks from that booming 90’s/early 2000’s scene who are keeping the flame going. We have made a ton of friends in the short time we have been around, and played with some great Ontario bands like Dave New World, Frank Dux, Lip Crunch, Among Legends and The Neo Lux, to name a few.
We are starting to see a lot more younger folks attending shows and starting bands. This is awesome because they bring fresh new perspectives to the scene, which will shape how the scene evolves in the future.
Keeping Brixton stoked keeps it alive for us. The rest of us are a bunch of old, jaded, salty dogs who have been in a ton of bands, played a ton of shows, and seen it all. But to Brixton, a lot of this world is brand new. Seeing the punk rock world through his eyes has made the rest of us much less cynical and renewed our excitement for the punk rock scene overall. It’s funny how re-invigorating it is to get back on stage and experience that again.
Mispr!nt: You released your second album last October. What’s the vibe? What are people saying?
Losing Streak: We don’t have a huge following (it’s growing…hopefully), but from the folks who have shared feedback, they seem to dig it.
We’re just a small band from a Hamilton basement, so we’re super stoked that People of Punk Rock Records even wanted to release our album alongside the roster they’ve already got. Having our work beside bands like No Fun At All, Ten Foot Pole, Choke, Face to Face? It’s amazing.
They are also doing a small run of digipack CDs of the album, which is sweet. Such an awesome label from Quebec that is helping to keep punk rock alive.
A few folks in the punk rock blogosphere gave the album a mention on platforms like Instagram, which is just such a huge compliment to us.
At the end of the day, we appreciate anyone who takes the time to check out our music. There’s probably never been a time where there’s more music to drown in. So people taking the time to check it out and give it a chance means a lot to us.
In 2023, Rob posted a picture on Instagram with the caption “Brix and Rob hanging @townehousetavern in Rob’s hometown. One day we will play there!” two years later, in 2025, Losing Streak made “one day” a reality with an opening gig for the legendary band Far From Heroes during the Townehouse’s jam-packed Christmas week.
Mispr!nt: Son and father team. That’s wild. How does that dynamic work when the riffs start flying?
Losing Streak: Brixton writes a lot of riffs and plays a ton of guitar on his own. He usually comes up with the initial ideas for the instrumental parts of songs and eventually brings those ideas to Rob, and they head to the lab in the basement. Rob still very much wants this to be Brixton’s band. We half-jokingly refer to Brix as ‘the boss’, but we do let him have the final say on how a song will go or might change down the line.
Once they have written the basic song structure from start to end, they will record it and send it to Charlie, who will write vocal melodies and lyrics, and to Ryan, who will develop some slick bass lines. Since Charlie and Ryan don’t live in Hamilton and can’t always be there to jam/write in person, we rely heavily on sending recordings back and forth via the interweb to show the other folks what we have contributed to the songs.
Mispr!nt: If Losing Streak had a motto spray‑painted on a wall, what would it say?
Losing Streak: Hmm…maybe “See you at the party, Richter” or “We’ll be right back.”
Mispr!nt: What’s the biggest lie people tell about punk right now?
Losing Streak: Maybe that the ‘punk’ moniker is confined to a specific sound or set of sounds. Like, we play a particular style of punk rock, but the concept of what is ‘punk’ goes way beyond the sound of our band. We feel like punk is more of a mindset and way of approaching music-making (and life in general) than it is a particular sound.
Bands like us that play fast, melodic music can be ‘punk’, but a band that is slower and plays more mellow music could also be ‘punk’ if they share a certain outlook, share certain values and share similar approaches to making and producing their music. For example, we do a lot of things DIY: we record and produce our own music, we design our own merchandise, we make our own album art, we book our own shows, etc. To us, that is part of what being ‘punk’ is all about. You don’t need to rely on the system to get your message out because you’ve made your own system that fits with your values. Along the way you network with other people who have created their own systems, and you help each other out, creating a community/eco system of like-minded individuals based on mutual respect and collaboration that doesn’t need to exist within any sort of big industry. That’s punk…to us, at least.
Mispr!nt: You’ve got that basement‑show DNA. What’s the magic of those sweaty, low‑ceiling gigs?
Losing Streak: Basement shows are the best. You only need a handful of people to feel like you’re playing to a packed house, and the overall sound is usually so loud and blown out that you can play terribly, and people will get excited because there’s almost a 1:1 transfer of energy from the band and the crowd.
At those kinds of shows, you hook up your gear and get to it, no bullshit. You play hard, play fast, and leave them wanting more. At the end of the gig one person buys a shirt, which is sweet because that means 1/5 of the audience now owns your merch.
Mispr!nt: Last one: if punk’s not dead, what’s it mutating into?
Losing Streak: As we mentioned earlier, we feel punk was always a mindset rather than a specific musical style. As long as there are people who have urgent messages they want to yell at the world through their music (or any other form of creative expression), and those people keep finding creative ways to communicate those messages outside of the established mainstream industries/mechanisms, punk will never die.
But it might need an afternoon on the couch after a good show.
