in  hamilton started playing sporadic acoustic concerts around the philadelphia area billed as "tom hamiltons american babies" mainly as a way to stay occupied between brothers past tours as the internal relationships in brothers past disintegrated and his musical tastes changed hamilton focused more on acoustic oriented music and decided to make a new band geared towards his new muse american babies was formed in  and soon after they released a self-titled album this was followed by their sophomore release flawed logic in  and third album knives and teeth on october   in  american babies released their forth album an epic battle between light  dark tom described the record as a discussion of both what it is like to experience depression and what it takes to maintain hope while in the midst of it