Irga began during the pandemic, in the summer of 2020. Peter Podkolzin left his previous band, where he played indie rock, and began to think about a new project. I've been thinking about and composing music for quite a long time. The first album is a classic long–shot. It was necessary to develop a concept, prepare for the release somehow, draw art for singles, make a promo video. On December 15th, "Welcome to Magovei" was released, a fully instrumental album mixed by Vladimir Lekhtinen, decorated with art by Tai Rostovtseva and professional translations of accompanying music texts. The Irga logo was drawn by Vladimir Prokofiev. Almost immediately, I started composing the next album, but in the summer of 2024, another important event happened - the release of the first full–fledged Irga video clip for the song "The Sorcerer and the Soldier". Work on the video has been underway since the beginning of 2024, and the idea belongs to Alexander "Shved" Alekseenkov, known for his videos for the Moscow doom metal bands Il and Endless Ocean. We've been puzzling over how to make a film adaptation of the fairy tale that forms the basis of the composition for a very long time. As a result, the director came up with a very unusual version of "shadow theater" – we asked artist Alexander Prokofiev to draw all the characters and locations in the form of silhouettes, then cut them out and shot a black-and-white video with a couple of technical tricks. It turned out to be a very interesting art-house video, matching the music of the album. That same summer, I met Nikita from Malist when he was putting together a live cast for his project. Around the middle of autumn, the music for the new album was almost finished, and all the guitars were recorded. From the very beginning, Irga's second album was conceived with vocals, and therefore Nikita Kholodov was invited to the microphone. In parallel, live drums were recorded with the participation of drummer Vladimir Udarnov. In January 2025, the album was sent to Vladimir Lekhtinen for mixing, and later that year the album ‘Black Pine Needles’ was released.