Tomo Miličević

Tomislav "Tomo" Miličević (Croatian pronunciation: [tǒːmo milǐːt͡ʃevit͡ɕ]; born September 3, 1979) is a Bosnian Croat-American musician and record producer. He was the lead guitarist of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars from 2003 to 2018. Born in Sarajevo but raised in the United States, Miličević moved to Troy, Michigan, in the early 1980s, where he became active in the local heavy metal scene and played in a number of bands, co-founding Morphic. In 2003, he joined Thirty Seconds to Mars, with whom he achieved worldwide recognition in the mid-2000s after recording the band's second album A Beautiful Lie (2005). Its full-length follow-ups, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success.

Miličević has also worked as a collaborator and music producer. Throughout the 2010s, he was featured on a recording with Dommin and collaborated with Ivy Levan on a number of releases, including Introducing the Dame (2013) and No Good (2015). Miličević has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style.

Tomo Miličević was born on September 3, 1979, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of SFR Yugoslavia, to a Bosnian Croat family. He is the middle child of Tonka and Damir Miličević. He has an elder sister, Ivana, and a younger brother, Filip. His father worked in agricultural engineering and his mother was a doctor. His family first arrived in the United States in 1982, where Miličević's brother Filip was born. They traveled back and forth until they permanently emigrated to Troy, Michigan, when Miličević enrolled in the third grade, to avoid the Bosnian War. He stated that he "would be in the army by 16, fighting in the front lines by age 17" if his family had not emigrated. After moving to the United States, both his parents worked in manufacturing industries in Troy and Detroit. A few years later, they started their own business.

Miličević became interested in classical music at early age, when he started to take violin lessons inspired by his uncle Željko "Bill" Miličević, a virtuoso violinist and professor of music at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. "I was actually born and bred to be a concert violinist", he explained. Miličević's introduction to the world of heavy metal music was around the age of 11. His parents supported his decision to start playing guitar, so he and his father made one together. He began writing his own music in high school, while at the same time performing in a number of local bands.

Miličević gained American citizenship in the early 1990s. He attended culinary school at Oakland Community College, becoming a certified executive and pastry chef, and worked in a number of restaurants in Metro Detroit. He graduated from Athens High School in Troy and then moved to Los Angeles, rejoining his siblings Ivana and Filip. The three later convinced their parents to leave Troy and resettle in Los Angeles, where they opened a restaurant.

Miličević began playing in bands around Troy in the late 1990s. He co-founded the group Morphic with some friends in 2000. The band first operated under the name Loki, before settling on its final name. By 2001, the group performed gigs at small Michigan venues and clubs, and recorded a number of demo tracks. The following year, Miličević left the band and was almost ready to quit his musical career. However, during this period, manager Arthur Spivak, who had previously met Miličević at a showcase concert with Morphic, told him about an audition for Thirty Seconds to Mars. Miličević then decided to move to Los Angeles where he had a successful audition with Thirty Seconds to Mars, replacing guitarist Solon Bixler. By 2003, the band consisted of Miličević, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Jared Leto, drummer Shannon Leto, and bassist Matt Wachter. The new lineup debuted on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn in February 2003.

Thirty Seconds to Mars entered the studio in March 2004 to begin working on their second album A Beautiful Lie. The recording process saw the band traveling to four different continents to accommodate Jared Leto's acting career. A Beautiful Lie was released on August 30, 2005, in the United States. Fueled by the band's relentless touring and the mainstream success of the single "The Kill", the album received multiple certifications all over the world, including platinum in the United States, with a worldwide sales total of over four million. The album tour saw the band playing at several major festivals, including Roskilde, Pinkpop, Rock am Ring, and Download.

In August 2008, during the recording process of the band's third studio album, Thirty Seconds to Mars attempted to sign with a new label, prompting EMI (the parent label of Virgin), to file a $30 million breach of contract lawsuit. After nearly a year of legal battles, the band announced on April 28, 2009, that the suit had been settled following a defense based on the De Havilland Law. Thirty Seconds to Mars then signed a new contract with EMI and released their third album This Is War in December 2009 to critical acclaim.