Coil began in London in 1983 as John Balance's side project from Psychic TV and became a full group the next year when Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, a founder of Throbbing Gristle, joined him. Scatology (1984), Horse Rotorvator (1986) and Love's Secret Domain (1991) took industrial music somewhere baroque and sensual, mixing tape collage, orchestral samples, acid house and ritual. Later the pair moved to the coast and turned inward: the drone experiments of Time Machines (1998), the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark, and the ecstatic live sets of the early 2000s with Thighpaulsandra.

Coil began in London in 1983 as John Balance's side project from Psychic TV and became a full group the next year when Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, a founder of Throbbing Gristle, joined him. Scatology (1984), Horse Rotorvator (1986) and Love's Secret Domain (1991) took industrial music somewhere baroque and sensual, mixing tape collage, orchestral samples, acid house and ritual. Later the pair moved to the coast and turned inward: the drone experiments of Time Machines (1998), the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark, and the ecstatic live sets of the early 2000s with Thighpaulsandra.