doa, from the Giza Studio label, is a three member rock band with a heavy emphasis on vocals. Their lineup consists of band leader Akihito Tokunaga on vocals and bass, Hiroki 'Daiki' Yoshimoto on lead vocals and Shinichiro Ohta on guitar and vocals. The band name doa comes from the members initials Daiki, Ohta and Akihito.
These three musicians came together with very interesting past experiences. Daiki spent his childhood in Australia and is first and foremost a professional race car driver. Starting his music career in 1993 as a studio singer, Ohta has worked for many major artists such as B’z, ZARD, T-BOLAN and FIELD OF VIEW. Not only is Akihito Tokunaga a bassist, but he also arranges music for artists, such as B’z, ZARD, and FIELD OF VIEW and even arranged KAT-TUN’s first major number one single, Real Face.
After fulfilling his first dream of racecar driving, Daiki started on his other dream in life which has always been to be a musician. He got to fulfill this second dream when he met Akihito Tokunaga for the first time and from that meeting doa was created. The trio released their first album, their only indies album release, in June 2004 called Deadstock. Right before doa’s major debut, their single Shiro no Jumon was used as a theme song for "Saiyuki Reload Gunlock." In November of the same year, a contract with a big label was signed and they came out with their major debut single, Eiyuu. This single also was used as a theme song for "Ultraman Nexus." Their next single in April 2005, Aoi Kajitsu, was also used as a theme song for this show.
Their first full length major album, open d, was released in February 2005 and the next month was another step in the right direction as doa was able to open for r.e.m. at the Nippon Budokan, gaining more exposure for themselves. In December of 2006, doa released Kokoro no Rhythm Tobichiru Butterfly which featured the opening and closing themes for the anime "Soten no Ken."
All of the members of doa do not exclusively work on this band, all three of them have other projects they work on in addition to this band. Since the start of this band, Daiki hasn’t stopped his racecar driving career for a second. On February 23, 2007, Daiki joined the prestigious team 5-Zigen to compete in the 2007 Formula Nippon Championship. For the rest of the year in 2007, there happened to be no releases for doa.
Shinichiro Ohta has constantly been helping B’z and ZARD with their tours and even participating as the support guitarist and chorus for B’z’s tour in 2006 and ZARD’s tour in 2007.
Akihito Tokunaga has also been helping B’z and ZARDwith some tours, however, he is more of a studio musician. In the studio, he worked on most of B’z’s albums and singles, programming and played bass for the releases. He also has been a support member for ZARD for their tour in 2008 as the support bassist and chorus.
2008 was a busy year for doa regarding music releases. They came out with four maxi-singles and one album, PRIME GARDEN. The band is also on both of the Giza Studio compilation albums, celebrating the label’s ten year anniversary that came out in 2008. As of January 2009, doa released their new single 365 no Diamond which became the theme song for the program "Ongaku Senshi MUSIC FIGHTER" for that month.
It seems that doa is full of activity this year in 2009, with lives and radio events. It will be interesting to see what else the band has in plan.
