Chroma is the debut studio album by the American rock band Cartel.

Shortly afterwards founding guitarist Andy Lee left the band and was replaced by Nic Hudson.

With songs planned out, the band went to record with producers Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount.

Chroma is the only full-length Cartel album to feature bassist Ryan Roberts, who departed the band in 2006.

[4] The band consisted of vocalist Will Pugh, bassist Ryan Roberts, drummer Kevin Sanders, and guitarists Joseph Pepper[4] and Andy Lee.

[3] Pugh explained that "With someone like Andy, [...] it's gonna lead to peoples' feelings getting hurt.

[3] In July 2004[5] Cartel played at the Atlantis Music Conference in Atlanta, which was witnessed by Rory Felton from The Militia Group.

[7] They recorded a demo of "Honestly" as a "kind of trial thing" with Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount as the band were looking for producers for their upcoming debut.

[8] In January and February 2005 the band supported As Tall as Lions and The Receiving End of Sirens on their U.S.

[10] In April, Cartel went on the Family Affair tour with label mates Brandtson, The Rocket Summer, and Umbrellas.

[6] For a majority of the songs, Pugh came up with the basic form, "a verse, chord progression, chorus, melody, things like that".

[15] While the band were working on "Honestly" Pugh thought "it just wasn't quite sounding right".

[6] It was initially going to be printed on vellum, similar to what Copeland had used for their Beneath Medicine Tree (2003) album.

[6] The band scrapped this and went for "hi-res photos and things like that",[6] a concept which came from Chris Donahue, Pugh and Jenkins.

[6] On June 25, 2005, Chroma was announced for release in three months' time; its track listing was posted online.

[21] In November 2005, they went on a tour of Japan with Oceanlane and Buddhiston, which was followed by a stint in the US with the Working Title and Terminal.

[22][23] Cartel went on the Screaming Is for Babies Tour[24] co-headlining with Copeland with support from the Starting Line and Gatsbys American Dream in February, March and April 2006.

They signed to Epic Records in March 2006, who wanted the band to re-shoot their live performance for the "Honestly" video, which ended up costing $20,000.

[30][31] The band went on a headlining tour in February 2007 with support from Boys Like Girls, Cobra Starship, Quietdrive, Permanent Me and New Atlantic.

[32] Chroma sold over 3,000 copies in its first week, becoming The Militia Group's most successful artist release.

[37] Its success was due to the band's online fan base and their use of Myspace, according to the vice president of marketing at Epic.

[39] In an interview with Alternative Press in May 2015 Pugh reckoned that album sales stood around "280, 290 thousand copies [sold]".

[49] To celebrate this, the band released a 7" vinyl with an acoustic version of the song as a B-side.