At the low end of the scale, Presonus is pretty good.  I basically gave away my firepod, since my cousin never paid me the $100.  You should be able to find on of those cheap, or the upgrade to it - the Firestudio.  If you are doing bands you'll want to have 8 or more inputs at some point and that is the cheapest wasy
 
You can chain together certain makes of interfaces but they have be designed to work together.  I know the firepod was supposed to do - my cousin had one and he wanted to gang them together.  Whether that worked or not I don't know and it would cost my cousin a c-note to tell me. ;-)
 
Something to file away now, rather than get frustrated later.  ASIO - the prefered music driver, can only have one driver at a time in que.  You have to uncheck everything else ASIO or you'll never get a drop of sound out of any ASIO unit.
 
Good hunting.