O-Town's Ashley Parker Angel on His Shift from Music to Wellness, Embracing His Past and the Art of Thirst Traps (Exclusive)

Angel recently teamed up with Dr. David Rizik to launch High Level Science, a medical-grade supplement brand

Over 25 years after Ashley Parker Angel got his star on Making the Band as a member of O-Town, the singer has entered his wellness era — and it's here to stay.

"I'm more fulfilled and happier now than ever," Angel, 44, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

After O-Town disbanded in 2003, the singer went on to pursue a solo career in music, had his very own MTV series There & Back, starred on Broadway's Hairspray and Wicked and went on The Masked Singer in 2023.

Now, Angel's launched High Level Science — and it stemmed from years of searching for healthy coping mechanisms as he navigated fame.

"Through my journey of entertainment, I realized that I needed to embrace health and wellness because I saw so many people go down a dark path," he says. "I didn't want to join the 27 club. So many young performers sadly passed away very young because they fell into drugs or alcohol."

When his personal health journey proved to be life-changing, he began exploring ways to help others feel their best. This path led to High Level Science — a medical-grade supplement brand that he launched with Dr. David Rizik — and he hopes it empowers millions to unlock their full potential.

Below, Angel opens up to PEOPLE about his passion for wellness, reflects on his boyband days and gets candid about his title as "King of Thirst Traps."

PEOPLE: What inspired your journey into the health and wellness space?

Ashley Parker Angel: My backstory is 20 years of being in entertainment. But I had always wanted to be in health and wellness. The tipping point for me with High Level Science in particular was actually when COVID shut the world down. People were really suffering mental health, emotional states, physical health. And so I launched an online health and wellness community, but it was really based on 20 years of working with the best and fitness and nutritionists and peak performance coaches.

I had always been obsessed with health and wellness because four years of my life I spent on Broadway performing eight shows a week, 2,000 performances. And then even before that, being in a boy band, you have to take care of yourself in tip-top shape. So I wanted to just give that knowledge back and I thought an online community would be a great fit.

How did that lead to High Level Science?

I met Dr. David Rizik because I had blood work that showed... Even though I was eating healthy and working out all the time, I didn't have good blood work. I had high cholesterol, I had high blood pressure, I was feeling fatigued and stuff. And so he became my doctor and started recommending just a handful of supplements. But in that conversation, like most doctors, he said, "I don't believe in most supplements, most supplements don't work because most supplements are not backed by 20, 30 years of research in the field." And he's like, "Here's what you need to be taking."

I was like, "We need to create a company together where we can clear up the confusion in the supplement world."

Did your interest in wellness begin long before that?

I would say in my mid-20s, I realized that like a lot of young people, I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be on TV, wanted to be on stage. I wanted to get those affirmations that I was talented enough to make it. What I realized with a lot of my peers was that in entertainment, there are so many mental health issues because when you become famous as a young person, it's a struggle mentally, especially to keep up with a level of success that you might have when you're younger.

In your O-Town days, you were — and still are — considered a heartthrob. As time went on, did you ever experience body image issues or did you feel pressure to look a certain way to continue to live up to that standard?

Yeah. And I think coming out at 18 in the way that I did, the frontman of a boyband and all that, any young performer in that regard can start to become very objectified. You do start to really identify with your appearance and your looks — and it can be very unhealthy as people age.

What I realized that after 20 years of being in that leading man, heartthrob kind of thing is that I wanted to pivot away from it. Because it was fun and I loved being able to be on stage and maybe change people's lives for an hour or two, but through health and wellness, I could change people's lives forever. And that became far more fulfilling and rewarding for me in a space like entertainment where you're very self-focused, you're focused on your image, and people are picking you apart and critiquing you.

In America, we love to build these celebrities up and then we love to tear them down. At a certain point, I felt like I wanted something that had more fulfillment and more purpose that was even bigger than those things.

This year is the 25th anniversary of your season of Making the Band. Do you still look back on those days with nostalgia?

I love it and I embrace it and I'm so grateful for it. That's part of my story. That's part of what brought me here. I am grateful because so many of the people that followed that part of my journey have followed me here. And so that's also... The support that I feel going in the direction of health and wellness is like they've all followed me on this journey, which is another reason why I'm grateful for my fanbase and really grateful that I was able to have that impact in people's lives. But now I'm making a different impact.

It's a new chapter and it's an exciting chapter. And I look at all the previous chapters as being so necessary to get to where I'm at now.

O-Town has gone on to reunite and release music — but you never joined again. Have you reconnected with the band recently?

I'm still friends with a couple of the guys. We caught up, we were at a wedding, all of us together not too long ago. Things have been friendly, and I appreciate that. When they did the reunion, I was still on Broadway, and so they've been now a band doing the reunion thing for quite some time while I've been going this direction. And so obviously it's not the same as it used to be because we were all on the road, living in a house together, all the things. Now it's a lot different. We're grown. They're in the band, I'm not. But I do really appreciate that they've kept it going.

Next year is the 25th anniversary of O-Town's debut song "Liquid Dreams." How often do people bring that up to you?

All the time. I'll just be in the grocery store and someone will be like, "You're the star of my liquid dreams."

In addition to your wellness guru title, you're also a dad to your 20-year-old son Lyric. Do you workout together?

We absolutely do. We hit the gym together. Actually, when he was younger, he booked a role on American Horror Story, and he had a big character arc. And then he just wanted to focus on school and have a normal childhood, and I'm glad that he had that too. But now that he's older and he's 20, he's going out on auditions and he's pursuing acting.

He's a really soulful person and he's got this incredible long hair, Johnny Depplook. And he's also got an incredible singing voice. He's also exploring those things now, so I can be the dad that's helping him maybe navigate that journey. And he's also helping me understand social media and all these new tools that we have that we didn't, not even that long ago.

As you hard-launched your wellness era on Instagram, you also perfected the art of the thirst trap. What's your secret?

I embraced it because at some point, some media outlet dubbed me the King of Thirst Traps. And so I was like, I'm just going to lean into it. Social media is very visual, and I want to spread a health and wellness message, but I also want to capture people's attention. Part of the thirst traps are also that I wanted to show people that at any age... I'm 44 and honestly I'm in better shape than when I was 24. And I think that's inspiring to people. I'm really all about body positivity and celebrating that.

Having lived it for so long, my goal was to be a walking billboard of, "If you live this kind of lifestyle, here's the kind of results that you can expect." And you don't have to be 20 years old.