Rickly was born and raised in Dumont, New Jersey into a Catholic family, and attended Dumont High School, where he was a member of the band and played the tenor sax. He was raised Catholic, Rickly is a diagnosed epileptic, which has affected his ability to tour. In early 2013, Rickly was mugged in New York City, where his cell phone, iPad, wallet, credit card, rent money, and medication were stolen. In 2015, Rickly was poisoned and robbed in Hamburg, Germany, while touring with No Devotion to play at the Reeperbahn Festival. Rickly was hospitalized, causing them to cancel their concert, but recovered for a scheduled show in Paris the following day. In a 2017 interview with Spin, Rickly admitted to battling a heroin addiction that began shortly after Thursday's breakup in 2011. Following Thursday's reunion in 2016, Rickly was inspired to quit using the drug.
Musical career
Rickly has contributed guest vocals to many songs, including My American Heart's "We Are the Fabrication", Murder by Death's "Killbot 2000", This Day Forward's "Sunfalls and Watershine", Circa Survive's "The Lottery", and My Chemical Romance's "This Is the Best Day Ever". He also occasionally performs solo, most recently in Hoboken, New Jersey at the Eyeball Records holiday party, performing the Thursday songs "Autumn Leaves Revisited" and "This Side of Brightness" acoustically. Lyrically, Rickly has been known to draw from a wide variety of influences, many of them being authors and poets. In a March 2009 interview, he cited the works of Denis Johnson, Martin Amis, Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace as being among his influences for the lyrics of Thursday's Common Existence album, which was released in February 2009. A tattoo on his forearm reads "love is love", a lyric from the band Frail; Rickly adopted these lyrics into Thursday's "A Hole in the World." Thursday's "Autobiography Of A Nation" is clearly influenced by poet Michael Palmer's "Sun." Rickly is currently writing, recording, and playing for United Nations, an experimental powerviolence collaboration, and No Devotion, the new band formed by the ex members of Lostprophets, both of which are also signed on by Collect Records. On tour.
Collect Records
In 2009, Rickly formed Collect Records, a record label which in its early years only co-released various albums, including releases by Touché Amoré, United Nations and Midnight Masses, but in 2014, the label announced plans to be the primary label behind albums by Black Clouds, Vanishing Life, Sick Feeling and No Devotion.
During the 2015 public scandal of hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli and his controversial monetary inflation of AIDS-related pharmaceuticals, it was revealed that Shkreli was a silent investor in Collect Records, while still allowing Rickly to retain creative control. Rickly and Shkreli had met when Shkreli purchased the guitar that Rickly had used to make Thursday's album Full Collapse for $10,000. Rickly said he was completely shocked by the scandal, stating: "I've seen the guy give away money to schools, charities, and frankly, our bands, who if anyone really knows the industry, is a hard sell. I am struggling to find how this is OK." Due to the controversy, Shkreli's relationship with Collect Records angered several artists signed to the label. One of the artists, Sick Feeling said in a public statement: "One thing is clear; as long as he has a part in the label, we, Sick Feeling, cannot. Our experience with Geoff, Norm, and Shaun has been nothing but positive, however, we cannot continue to work with Collect as long as Martin Shkreli has any part in it." Dominic "Nicky" Palermo of Nothing, who had just recently signed a two-record deal with Collect Records, expressed interest in ending the contract and said: "I'm hoping that we can just get out of this with someone else and not have to go down whatever ugly road that could lead to." Within two days of the controversy, Rickly put out a press release expressing that the label severed its relationship with Shkreli, and that the amount of money he currently had in the bank could not cover Collect Records' outstanding invoices, leaving its future uncertain, without Shkreli's significant financial contributions to Collect.
