Mark del Castillo

Who is Mark del Castillo?

Mark del Castillo is a guitarist, vocalist, composer and songwriter.

Mark del Castillo was born in Brownsville, Texas, United States. Raised in a family with many musical influences, he started learning guitar at age 14, following after his talented older brother Rick del Castillo. For some time Mark studied guitar by himself; then in year 1990 he entered the University of Texas at Brownsville and became a Music Major. There Mark studied Music Theory, Ear Training, and Applied Guitar and played in University Latin/Jazz band.

In 1991, Mark started to play with a cover band called Kickstart as a guitarist and spent over three years with them. He left Kickstart, and went to Texas A&M University to study in the College of Biomedical Science. There Mark and several his student friends came together to play as a band called Vivid. They graduated in 1996 and moved to Austin, Texas, where they started to perform on the famous 6th Street circuit. As Vivid they played in other cities in Texas and even had some show trips to Europe.

At that time Mark del Castillo also joined the rock band called Milhouse, where he for the first time met Mike Zeoli. Mark's brother Rick recorded and produced the first Milhouse CD, for which Mark wrote and performed an instrumental Latin-flamenco track named “Para Mija Linda”. Written for his future wife, this song inspired him very much, and he started to write more guitar music in different Spanish styles. Mark created a few instrumentals and then began collaboration with Alex Ruiz, who wrote lyrics to several of songs. Mark offered these songs to his brother Rick del Castillo. Rick liked them very much. The brothers realized that they had never worked together before and decided to start writing and playing music together.