He gained prominence as a founding member of the progressive rock bands King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP).

He became a full-time musician at 17, playing in several rock bands until his friend and fellow Dorset guitarist Robert Fripp invited him to join King Crimson as lead singer and bassist.

Lake left the band in 1970 and achieved significant success in the 1970s and beyond as the singer, guitarist, bassist, and producer of ELP.

As a member of ELP, Lake wrote and recorded several popular songs including "Lucky Man" and "From the Beginning".

Lake launched a solo career, beginning with his 1975 single "I Believe in Father Christmas" which reached number two in the UK.

Gregory Stuart Lake[4] was born on 10 November 1947 in the Parkstone area of Poole in Dorset, to Harry, an engineer, and Pearl, a housewife.

[7][8] Speaking about his childhood, Lake said he was "born in an asbestos prefab housing unit" into a "very poor" family, and remembered several cold winters at home,[9] but credits his parents for sending him money and food during his time as a struggling musician.

[11] At the age of 12, he first learned to play the guitar and wrote his first song, "Lucky Man",[12][13] which he didn't write down, simply committing it to memory.

[14] He named his mother, a pianist, as his initial musical influence and she bought Lake a second hand guitar to learn on.

[11] Strike taught him "these awful Bert Weedon things", reading musical notation exercises with violin pieces by Niccolò Paganini, and playing 1930s pop tunes, the latter of which became an influence on Lake at the time.

His bandmates refused to drive back home that night, leaving Lake to sleep in the van where he "woke up blue ...

[19] Following a brief stint in the Shy Limbs, by 1968 Lake was involved with the Gods, based in Hatfield, which he described as "a very poor training college",[20][15] but the group secured a residency at the Marquee Club in London.

[15] Peter Sinfield was the band's primary lyricist, with Lake contributing some of the lyrics for their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King.

[28] In San Francisco during the US tour, Lake struck up a friendship with Nice keyboardist Keith Emerson; the two shared similar musical interests, were ready to leave their respective bands, and talked about the benefits of their forming a new group together.

[15] When King Crimson returned to the UK in early 1970, Lake agreed to sing on the band's second album In the Wake of Poseidon,[29] and appear on the music television show Top of the Pops with them, performing the song "Cat Food".

Lake became known for performing on an expensive Persian carpet on stage; sometimes criticized as being one of the band's lavish egocentric stagepieces, Lake stated that it served a practical purpose: it covered a rubber mat he stood on at his microphone to address his fear of electrocution after he received an electric shock from a microphone on stage.

[38] By then the band were tax exiles and relocated to Switzerland, France, Canada and the Bahamas as they were restricted to two months' stay in England a year.

The group reformed for a number of years in the mid-1990s and released two albums, Black Moon in 1992 and In The Hot Seat in 1994, before permanently disbanding except for one forty-year anniversary reunion concert in 2010 at London's High Voltage Festival.

[31] Several months following the break-up of ELP in 1979, Lake began to write new songs and had "put down a tremendous amount of material" for his first solo album.

He travelled to Los Angeles and worked with a group of session musicians to develop his songs further, but he found a lack of personality in the music, though not at the fault of the performers.

[43][44] The debut concert for the tour of the album took place in August 1981 at the Reading Festival, with bandmates Gary Moore on guitar, Ted McKenna on drums, Tommy Eyre on keyboards, and Tristram Margetts on bass.

He disbanded the Greg Lake Band soon after completing it, without promoting or touring the album, and split with his record company.

"[47] Adding to the decision, lead guitarist Gary Moore had written solo material that brought him a recording contract: "I was working with Greg Lake for two years during '81 and '82 and we did two albums.

The group's usual bassist Pino Palladino was touring at the time of recording, and Lake was asked to play bass.

[55] Lake spent several years writing his autobiography Lucky Man, originally planned to be published in 2012 but eventually released posthumously in June 2017.

[56][57] On 19 June 2017, the Municipality of Zoagli (Genoa) Italy awarded the Honorary Citizenship post mortem to Greg Lake and engraved a marble plaque that is next to Castello Canevaro where the musician performed on 30 November 2012.

[58][59] In the last years he worked on producing for Manticore "Moonchild" by Annie Barbazza and Max Repetti: an album where some of his most iconic songs were arranged in an avant-garde/contemporary mood, for only piano and voice.

[29] Numerous fellow musicians paid tribute, including Rick Wakeman and Steve Hackett,[29] Ringo Starr,[6] John Wetton,[61] Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt,[62] Ian Anderson[62] and ELP drummer Carl Palmer.