Tim McIlrath was born November 3, 1979 in Chicago, Illinois. At a young age he read books such as 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which would inspire his later work. As a child he went to "Our Lady of the Wayside," where he was made fun of for having one brown eye and one blue eye. This is known as heterochromia. As an early teenager, all of Tim's friends were into snowboarding, so Tim saved up money until he had $400 to buy a snowboard. But instead of buying a snowboard, he bought a Gibson SG.