More about them.

Pentatonix began with three friends who grew up together and were schoolmates at Martin High School in Arlington, Texas: Kirstin "Kirstie" Maldonado (born May 16, 1992), Mitch Grassi (born July 24, 1992), and Scott Hoying (born September 17, 1991).^[2] Hearing of a local radio show hosting a competition to meet the cast of Glee, they arranged a trio version of "Telephone" and sent it in. Although they did not end up winning the competition, it sparked attention around their school, where the group began performing. After their version of "Telephone" by Lady Gaga gained attention on YouTube, they continued performing.^[16]

The group met the day before the auditions for the third season of The Sing-Off began.^[17][22] The group successfully auditioned for the show and eventually went on to win the title for 2011 (season three).^[23]Hoying and Maldonado both graduated from Martin High School in 2010, Grassi in 2011. Hoying went off to the University of Southern California (USC) to pursue a bachelor's degree in Popular Music, while Maldonado pursued a Musical Theater major at the University of Oklahoma.^[17] While at USC, Scott Hoying joined an a cappella group called SoCal VoCals. He found out about The Sing-Off from another member of the group, Ben Bram (also their arranger, producer, and sound engineer) and was encouraged to audition for the show.^[17] He persuaded Kirstie Maldonado and Mitch Grassi to join him, but the show required at least four members.^[18][19]Hoying met Avriel "Avi" Kaplan (born April 17, 1989), a highly recognized vocal bass in the a cappella community, through a mutual friend. Then the trio found Kevin Olusola (born October 5, 1988) on YouTube, where one of his videos in which he was simultaneously beatboxing and playing the cello (called "celloboxing") had gone viral. Kevin was born in Pasadena, California and graduated pre-med from Yale University. He speaks fluent Mandarin after spending a year studying in China.^[20][21]

Pentatonix, as suggested by Scott Hoying, is named after the pentatonic scale, a musical scale or mode with five notes per octave.^[24] The group believed that the scale's five notes matched their membership. The group replaced the last letter with an 'x' to make it more appealing.^[25] The quintet derives its influences from pop,dubstep, electro, reggae, hip hop, and classical music.