James Lee is an American singer-songwriter, musician and former member of ROYAL PIRATES (로열 파이럿츠). He graduated from Los Altos High School and later obtained a bachelor's degree in Communication from California State University, Fullerton.

He worked as a model for a few years before turning to his real passion, music. He began his career at the age of 16 as the bassist for American bands METALCORE, AZUSA, FRONTMAN and CLEAR AND CONSCIOUS to earn money for his college tuition.

He made his debut in September 2009 when he joined ROYAL PIRATES as their new bassist. The band had been formed since 2004 (under the name FADING FROM DAWN) but had only performed in U.S. nightclubs and music festivals but were already well-known in South Korea thanks to their YouTube videos.

The band made their official South Korean debut in August 2013 with the release of their first digital single, "Shout Out". He then began appearing in commercials and variety shows despite speaking very little Korean.

However, in June 2015, he suffered a severe accident when a metal door frame fell on him when he was entering a restaurant. The glass door nearly severed his wrist, and the steel frame damaged his shoulder. The doctors initially offered him to amputate the wrist as he would suffer pain for the rest of his life. But, as he did not want to use a prosthetic wrist to play music, he declined and chose to have surgery to repair the damaged nerves.

As a result, he could no longer play the bass due to the pain, so he switched to keyboard and synthesizer and began working as the band's programmer. Unfortunately, he underwent 5 more surgeries to repair his wrist and later developed a blood clot in his brain, which required another surgery, so in January 2017, Apple of the Eye (애플오브디아이) announced his departure from the band.

Since then, he has returned to the United States and now produces music for several Chinese musicians, such as Jason Zhang.

(Source: MyDramaList) Edit Biography