For Today post statement on removal of guitarist Samuel Penner

On Wednesday evening, For Today guitarist Samuel Penner posted a lengthy statement claiming that he was essentially kicked out of the band by the rest of the members.

For Today have responded with a statement of their own, which claims they didn't kick Penner out, but rather asked him to leave due to “too much going on in his life to be on the road playing shows.”

Read more: For Today are in the studio

You can read the band's full statement below. With both sides of the story out in the open now, what do you make of the situation?

As you may have heard by now, we asked our guitarist Sam to leave the band following our last tour. We did NOT kick him out of the band for going home to take care of a family emergency. We would never do that. The bottom line is that Sam simply has too much going on in his life to be on the road playing shows. We've seen it put stress on him over the last several months, even to the point of missing flights and rehearsals before tour to be at home longer. He went home from multiple tours (besides this last one) forcing us to have last minute fill ins for weeks of shows at a time. If you saw us play live in the last couple months, there's a good chance that Sam wasn't even on stage with us. We told him months ago that if he wanted to continue playing in the band, that he would have to make some changes. He agreed, but we never saw any change. We're definitely not perfect and don't expect perfection from anyone. But we knew asking Sam to stop touring and stay home with his wife was the right thing to do for both parties. I think it's unnecessary that internal band issues be made public and it's unfortunate that this situation has been painful for everyone involved. We have taken steps to try making this transition as smooth as possible for Sam and his wife. We all love Sam dearly and are going to miss having him on the road and on stage with us.