Pearce was born on 27 April 1956 and grew up in Sheerwater, a suburb of Woking in Surrey which he said was a "white, working-class ghetto"; his father worked as a courier for the military and had served in World War II.
[1] As a child, Pearce was exorcised by his parents for alleged demonic possession, and after his father died, his mother and he would "muck around with a Ouija board".
[4] After Crisis disbanded in 1980, Pearce formed Death in June with Crisis bandmate Tony Wakeford (currently of the English folk noir band, Sol Invictus) and Patrick O'Kill né Leagas (now a member of the English band Mother Destruction).
Pearce was highly influential in the creation of a musical movement often referred to as neofolk, often collaborating and playing live with various artists within the genre.
His literary influences include Yukio Mishima and Jean Genet, whom he admires "not only because their work was brilliant but that they were also homosexual".