[4] At age 8, he started practicing on the bass guitar, learning songs by bands from his father's collections, such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.

He convinced his father to give him the Fender Bassman and speaker cabinet Wilton inherited from an uncle who died in a motorcycle accident.

[citation needed] While attending junior high school[4] and Interlake High School,[5] Wilton began to explore the guitar world further by listening to hard rock and heavy metal music such as Judas Priest, UFO, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, and Deep Purple,[4] and he began practicing seriously, for 2 hours per day.

After studying for 1–5 years, he ran out of money,[4] but by this time, he had met bass guitarist Eddie Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield.

In 2002, Wilton started a side-band with former Alice N' Chains guitarist and My Sister's Machine vocalist Nick Pollock, called Soulbender.

[12] In 2010, Wilton released the single "Coming for You" with his hard rock project Wratchet Head, which was intended for those Queensrÿche fans, "whose ears have longed to once again be filled with the classic, melodic and sometimes haunting sounds of 'the earlier years'".