St. Elmo’s Fire coalesced out of the greater Cleveland, Ohio musical Oort cloud in the fall of 1979 and streaked across the sky in a fiery but short-lived burn. Friends Paul Kollar, Erich Feldman and Elliot Weintraub had begun writing music together during the summer of 1979, and were ready to put a band together. Paul’s old bandmates Mark Helm and Steve Stavnicky from Vasil Zook were recruited, with Helm joining in September and Stavnicky a couple months later. The band continued writing and rehearsing through the winter of 1979 and recorded demos that got air play on local stations in the Cleveland area.

The band started gigging around northeast Ohio in February 1980 and by the summer were playing larger clubs to a growing fan base, culminating with a July show at the Cleveland Agora. As the summer turned to fall, though, Punk and New Wave were dominating the club scenes and gigs for progressive rock bands became increasingly harder to find. After a series of personnel changes, new demos, and attempts to press on, the band grew tired and by May of 1981 had decided to put St. Elmo’s Fire down for a long nap.

In the early 1990s Paul Kollar was living in Raleigh, North Carolina, and during a visit from Mark Helm in 1994 the two laid down some basic tracks for old and new tunes. By 1999 Paul had relocated to Iowa and from there recruited original and new members for a 2-year long-distance collaboration project to produce a new St. Elmo’s Fire studio album. The result, “Artifacts of Passion”, was released in 2001.