clarification

Hi guys

It has come to my attention that my band is the object of accusation for cheating.

I would like to clarify that we did not cheat and would never consider cheating. We worked hard to film the video and meet the deadline. Like every band in this competition, it would be a dream come true to share the stage with Linkin Park, but like all the other contestants (I hope) we neither participated nor was aware of cheating to rack up votes.

It is hurtful to be accused of - after taking DELIBERATE EFFORTS TO PLAY IT LEGIT - being dirty little perpetrators of cheating. Please know your facts before making such hurtful claims.

It is true that we had garnered a disproportional amount of votes. Indeed, logging in at work and seeing how many votes we'd gotten, I myself was just as surprised as anyone else. But having been deducted over 300 votes (whilst no other band received any perceivable fine), we are just as much the victim of the fallacies of internet voting as any other band.

Call me naive and stupid, but (as I stated in my previous post) I genuinely believed that one of the great things about this internet competition was that inexperienced unexposed bands such as Fallinline could even be considered in the same breath as artists such as Gong Wu, 24 Herbs and FBI - all of whom we have seen at live gigs and whom we deeply admire and respect. But perhaps I truly am just naive and stupid.

Do not accuse us of cheating because we have not cheated. It is very possible that our friends and family may have gotten overexcited and spread a viral (for example, I knwo for a fact that a friend of mine told her college friends in the US about the comp and made them make accounts on AnD) or perhaps even made multiple accounts because they wanted to see us win.

But the very bottom absolutely sincere line is that we did not cheat; furthermore we did not ask for nor encourage people to spam our candidacy with votes. As i said before, we took deliberate efforts to play it fair - for example, one of our good friends asked us if he wanted us to have him make more accounts to rack up votes. We flatly and firmly told him no and begged him to tell anyone else to not do that. And to be insinuated with cheating after all this?

If the AnD administrators have found that malpractice was involved with our votes, I absolutely encourage them to level it out back to a fair playing field. However, not on behalf of my band, but personally, I feel that the extent of the penalty is disproportional to perhaps what other bands may have received.

But hey what do i know, right?

With absolute deepest sincerity I apologize if we have upset anybody in the past couple of days.

• GSK