Gold Standard Laboratories, commonly known as GSL, is the latest label casualty in an increasingly long (and quite depressing) list of superb indie labels that can fight the good fight no longer. Founded by Sonny Kay in 1993, the label moved from Colorado to Southern California and developed quite a pedigree of artists, including the Faint, the Rapture and !!!.
The label expressed the reasons behind its closure on its website:

"In recent years, we've experienced the onset of factors that have seriously limited our ability to maintain what we feel is the essence of the label; the experimental attitude and artistic freewheeling of times past are simply no longer sustainable. Rather than compromise our goals and beliefs, or allow our course to be charted by financial constraint and an industry in flux, we've decided the time has come for GSL to cease releasing new music, and to close this chapter of our story. We've spent the better part of the past year considering this decision."

An incredible shame considering that the label had such diversion in its releases ranging from the aforementioned groups to albums by At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta, both of which consisted of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, who partnered with the label in 1996.