The band went through many line-up changes over the years, with the only consistent member being its founder, Mitchell D. Krol (aka James Junkin Jr., born May 23, 1966).
As he told Nancy Kilpatrick for her 2004 book The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined, "I was doing a lot of drugs, getting heavily into the S&M scene and spending a lot of time with my friend Malissa X. I played her some of my music and it really turned her on...so we came up with this concept of Masochistic Religion, a sort of dark S&M theater done to music.
The band recorded a lot of music, they performed constantly and, as Krol continued "we were famous for smashing our instruments and destroying clubs.
[9][10] In 1992, Masochistic Religion played New York's Battery Park with the French-Canadian poet and interdisciplinary artist Pierre-André Arcand.
Just 100 copies were released, each one with a hand-made book of the Poe text, and original etchings and design by the Toronto artist Albert Strano.