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Last year, Starlab Studios had to start over.

Forced out of its old Prospect Street location two years prior to make way for the Green Line’s planned extension through Somerville, the scrappy DIY music-and-arts service set up shop again at a new spot a few blocks away in Union Square. The GLX was coming, and there wasn’t much they could do.

Now, after months of renovations in its new headquarters (a cozy, repurposed car garage), Starlab is again facing the possibility of being uprooted, this time via a contract dispute with a new landlord who, Starlab’s leaders say, has locked them out of the space.

This time, Starlab is fighting back, rallying its community of supporters to help pay for a brewing legal battle.

“It’s frustrating,” Richard Hawke, a Starlab leader who runs the studio’s video and photo wing, told Metro. “You put a lot of hard work and effort into trying to build something bigger and better, and something that a lot of people can take part in, and then have it be stopped by red tape and all that.”

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From its modest beginnings in 2009, the group grew into notable DIY multimedia production studio for up-and-coming local bands, among them “Mean Creek” and “Dan Webb and the Spiders.” For the past six years it has run an annual music and arts festival.

In January, they plan to host a pair of benefit concerts – the first on Wednesday night at the Middle East in Cambridge, featuring a lineup of acts that have passed through Starlab’s doors over its history, headlined by Boston outfits “CreaturoS,” “Mini Dresses” and “The Dazies.” Find tickets here. A second one is scheduled for Jan. 29 at Bit Fest in Everett.