Bauhaus

The English band Bauhaus is widely recognized as being one of the first gothic rock bands. Formed in 1978 by four UK musicians who decided to call their venture Bauhaus 1919, after the German Bauhaus art movement of the 1920s, the group would go on to create a brooding style of music that blended haunting vocals, courtesy of frontman Peter Murphy, with instrumentals that combined a myriad of styles, such as punk, glam and krautrock. After playing a few gigs around Britain, the band was noticed by legendary BBC DJ John Peel, who asked the group to record a session for his show. The quartet did and also dropped the "1919" numerals from its name. After the radio program aired, Bauhaus started to receive a lot of attention, and its debut album, 1980's In the Flatt Field, though receiving generally neutral reviews by critics, manged to do extremely well on the British music charts. While the band has subsequently led a tumultuous career, breaking up and reforming multiple times, it hasn't tarnished the reputation it built for itself during its early existence.