1995-1997

From the ashes of the legendary "stoner rock" band Kyuss, comes Queens of the Stone Age.  Led by singer/guitarist Josh Homme. As the musical genius in Kyuss, Homme fashioned the Black Sabbath type riffs that got . Following Kyuss' break-up in late 1995, Homme relocated from Palm Desert, Calif., to Seattle and spent two years touring with the Mark Lanegan led  Screaming Trees. Homme also produced a long (and still running) series of Desert Session albums for Man's Ruin Records (R.I.P.) that featured a cast of collaborating musicians including former Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepard.

In 1997 Homme formed Queens of the Stone Age with fellow Kyuss band mate Alfredo Hernandez and debuted on a split with the currently deceased Kyuss later that year. Truly a change for Homme the split contained three new tracks from QOTSA and three Kyuss songs. Nick Oliveri, later joined, shortly after the release of the first QOTSA LP.

Gamma Ray: the first release from what would become QOTSA. The name Gamma Ray was dropped when a heavy metal band also called Gamma Ray, and had already copyrighted the name threatened to sue. Gamma Ray was originally Josh Homme, John McBain (Monster Magnet), Van Conner (Screaming Trees), and Matt Cameron (Soundgarden).

*Side note - Nick Oliveri's "entrance" into QOTSA can be heard at the very end of I was a teenage hand model on the self titled album.

1998-2000

Queens of the Stone Age released their self-titled debut album in late 1998 on Loosegroove Records. Homme financed the album, and its was received very well by critics. QOTSA was named by some as one of the most important hard and heavy bands on the music scene. The following year, the band was signed by Interscope, who released their Second LP Rated R, in 2000. 

Rated R: The second QOTSA album featuring Josh on lead vocals/guitar, Nick on Bass/vocals, Gene Troutmann on the Drums, and a variety of others playing a variety of instruments.  Rated R gave QOTSA a small taste of stardom with their slightly popular single Lost Art of Keeping a Secret, and the song of which I play the beat of at every opportunity i have on every instrument possible, The Feel Good Hit of the Summer.

2001-2002

For their next album, QOTSA joined forces with A Perfect Circle guitarist Troy Van Leuween for rhythm guitar. They also hooked with Foo Fighter front man Dave Grohl (who drummed on all but one track), and Dean Ween for 2002’s Songs for the Deaf. The record, with its breakout single, “No One Knows,” landed on many year-end critic’s top-ten lists and brought the band more commercial success than ever before. The commercial success was not received well by fans however, the precious QOTSA bulletin board was swamped by newbies who heard "No One Knows" and thought it was a Grohl side project. Grohl soon exited to rejoin the Foo Fighters, thereby continuing QOTSA’s long-standing revolving-door tradition.

2002-2004

Has QOTSA Settled down? After Dave Grohl departs from QOTSA, Josh, and Nick knew they needed to find a new drummer, because, well that's how a band works. For the duty of drummer, they call upon Joey Castillo, former drummer of Danzig.  The fans weren't all happy about the change of drummers, and the newbies kept on asking questions such as "Is Dave Grohl still touring with QOTSA?" and "Did Dave leave because Josh gave him blue balls?" Although none of these questions had an answer of yes following them, they kept on coming.

After almost a year and a half of touring with QOTSA, the Dave questions keep coming, QOTSA keeps rocking, the QOTSA bulletin board occasionally gets attacked by shit eating AAF fans, and Clay Aiken is still gay....

...More To Come

Sources - Rolling Stone Article; Biography: Queens of the stone age.