Located between Roncesvalles Village and Parkdale in Toronto’s West End, Green Door Studios was founded in 2002. The studio itself is housed in a converted 100- year- old brick building that is rumoured to have once been a blacksmith’s workshop.The immediate surrounding area is today a residential neighbourhood, so the studio has a very calm and hidden away feel to it and yet Queen St. West is only a block away.

When the building was purchased in 2001, the old brick walls were crumbling, the floor was oil and dirt, the roof was caving in, and the dilapidated wooden barn doors were falling off their hinges. After the structure was resuscitated, what is now the live room was the first part of the studio to be built. At a size of 14x30 ft with 9.5 ft ceilings, this room originally accommodated both performers and recorders. The adjacent control room is 12 x 22 ft with 11ft ceilings. Construction in this half of the studio was completed in the fall of 2005.

Two colourful features remain from the original building; the red and orange brick walls and the distinctive green colour of the front entrance.

John Critchley became known in the music world as the driving force behind the widely celebrated Canadian band, 13 Engines. John was the singer and lead guitarist in the band and produced several of their albums. The Engines recorded and toured extensively for over a decade, creating a body of work on the EMI and Nocturnal labels. Their album “Perpetual Motion Machine” (co-produced by John), was voted one of the top 50 records of all time by a Canadian artist in a national poll of music critics published by Chart Magazine. In 2000, John released his first solo CD "Crooked Mile," on the SoundKing/Outside imprint to critical acclaim.

John has recently focused his attention producing and engineering in Green Door Studios, of which he is the owner. John has been involved in the production of a number of new albums by a diverse group of artists over the last four years at Green Door. For a few examples, click here.

John has also been active in scoring for film and television. In 2002 he scored the feature film “Goldirocks” which had it’s theatrical debut in Toronto and enjoyed an extensive international film festival run, winning “Best Indie Feature” at the La Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles. John has since also recorded and sound edited the special features segment of the Goldirocks DVD.

In 2005, John recorded the score and did the sound mix/sound edit for the short film "Face Off!", and scored the short film “Yield to Self”. Most recently (2007) John scored the “Early Adopter” segment of the feature film “Infest Wisely” and composed music segments for an upcoming program on the Discovery Channel/National Geographic TV. In addition, John’s songs have been featured in Canadian films; “Come Back Lover” was included in John Greyson's film “Law of Enclosures” (starring Sara Polley) and “Riccochet” in Goldirocks.