When I look back upon my many years spent as the vocalist and lyricist of SKYCLAD, I feel enormously proud of what we managed to collectively achieve. I think that basically we created a brand new sound with that band, which has over subsequent years influenced a whole load of other musicians - both in the metal and folk scenes.
Martin Walkyier interview, Blabbermouth, 2008
Formed by Martin Walkyier (SABBAT) and Steve Ramsey (SATAN) with Graeme English, SKYCLAD released their debut LP - The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth - on this day in 1991 through Noise.
[The violin] was kind of more like an experiment, you know? We thought it'd be less work, so it's only one song in the album. It's essentially a thrash album, with one folk metal tune; we had a violin player to come down and play on that song, and while he was there we said "we'll stick a couple bits in here and a couple bits in there", and we liked it, we liked how it sounded and the metal stuff as well. So by the next album we just had a fiddle player in the band, Fritha Jenkins. And it went on from that.
Steve Ramsey / Skyclad interview, Metal Storm, 2014