On Thorns I Lay is among the bands of the first major gothic doom wave that systematized the principle of contrasting vocals known as the "beauty and the beast" style that became popular in the late 1990s.

Through the years the band's played in Greece and in Europe together with Dream Theater, In Flames, Anathema, Amorphis, Katatonia, Tiamat, The Gathering, Satyricon,Septic Flesh and many more.

[11] For instance, in a review from that time, journalist Nicolas Radegout commented:" "After two years of absence, the Greeks of On Thorns I Lay present their second album.

The combination of soprano singing and death metal works well, the guitars are crystalline, enhancing the melodies, and the keyboards add to creating the atmospheres.

[12] The group viewed these three musicians as having brought a breath of fresh air, a sort of rebirth[12] as this combination facilitated the fusion of Greek oriental influences with the melancholic elements contributed by the Romanian piano and viola.

[12] Apart from the performances by Helena and Ionna Doroftei along with drummer Andrew Olaru,[5] they also enlisted the services of jazz Romanian vocalist Marcela Buruiana, who would leave her mark on the records with her gentle, angelic, and melancholic voice.

Residing in the capital of Bucharest for their studies, in southern Romania, they had to regularly make train trips back and forth to reach Iași, located far to the north, where the other Romanian members of the band lived.

[12] As he explained, the group had been somewhat frustrated with what they felt as poor production on the Sounds of Beautiful Experience record, and thus, they aimed to create a new version by incorporating viola parts and female vocals.

[13] Nevertheless, the band strives to develop their own originality, creating a unique sound based on the interplay of polyphonies of lead guitars in combination with keyboard and viola parts, comparable to the violin sections in the style of Celestial Season in the past.

In substance, Stefan Glas describes Future Narcotics as "a consistently high-quality album by On Thorns I Lay that reveals both old strengths and a new face.

[5] The label Holy Records displayed reluctance and instead preferred to incorporate them into a new extended edition of Future Narcotic, despite the reservations of the group, who were uneasy about requiring fans to pay again for a portion of the tracks they already had.

[5] In the year 2002, the band recorded with their fifth album named titled Angel Dust, still inspired by the dark and melancholic atmosphere[5] they had experienced in Romania.

[5] Heavily influenced by Katatonia,[5] the band aimed to reduce these elements, as they had grown weary of them, and preferred to play a pure and melancholic style of metal.

[5] However, their music retains certain elements of their previous albums, with occasional appearances of Buruiana's female vocals and Elena Doroftei's viola lines.

Due to their medical professions, they were unable to go on tour and only performed a few concerts at festivals[5][16] To convey the album's aesthetic directions, critics often describe the record in terms of the noticeable distance it holds from the style developed in their album Crystal Tears, such as: "Since 1999's 'Crystal Tears', which delighted fans of the genre with its beautiful Gothic metal melancholy, female vocals, and violin parts, On Thorns I Lay has nowadays focused more on clean male vocals and Katatonia-style riffs.

If anything, like Katatonia and Opeth, OTIL have busted the genre wide open and simply make deeply moving, dynamic, heavy rock music.

Crystal clean vocal production, varying tempos, and a complexly textured mix of sheer instrumental and songwriting prowess set this band apart from many of its former peers.

Lyrically, OTIL stand on the bleaker side of the divide, but this is tempered by their progressive, artful rendering of power, dynamic, range, and intensity[19]However, this transition to a more alternative rock sound had elicited varied reactions among critics, some praising,[19][20] while others express mixed sentiments.

[24] During that period, the members of On Thorns I Lay were also contemplating, alongside their musical direction at the time, reforming the band Phlebotomy with the drummer of Septic Flesh, to play in a brutal death metal style influenced by Suffocation, Autopsy and Grave.

[5][16] In May 2003, the band officially announced on their website the permanent inclusion of Maxi Nil as a full member of the group, in preparation for their next album.

[9][31] On July 16, 2015, the band announced the upcoming release on their official Facebook page: "Our new album will be out in September 2015 titled 'Eternal Silence' from Sleaszy Rider Records.

The positive feedback that we receive, push ourselves to work very hard to reproduce our new stuff (...) we hope that we are gonna match the past with the future..."[35] In October 2017, the group announced the arrival of a new bassist, Jim Ramses.

This new direction led the Rockhard Magazine at the time to consider Aegean Sorrow as one of their most extreme albums due to its darker tone and reconnection with the band's Death Metal origins.

[28] It addresses, as a poetic theme, humanitarian catastrophes, misery, and the grief they felt, as well as pessimistic feelings that more of this will happen in the near future in their region.

In February 2018, while promoting the upcoming release of Aegean Sorrow, the band announced that they were already writing songs for the following album (pre-production phase).

[28] The album was eventually recorded in March 2019,[31] during a challenging life phase for songwriter Christ Dragmestianos, which influenced the emotional content of the music.

Anger, Pain, Sadness, Nostalgia for our lost homelands... We wanted to capture all these emotions in the best possible way and so we used over 15 traditional instruments, which were played by some of the best professional musicians in Greece.

[43] In 2022, Stefanos Kintzoglou reformed Phlebotomy with two former members of On Thorns I Lay, Akis and Fotis, who had also left the band some time ago.

Building on the already dark tones of its two predecessors, this album takes an even darker and bleaker turn, standing as the band's most ambitious project and aiming to be what they consider their best work.

It incorporates various stylistic influences,[48] including melodic death and black metal riffing,[48] gothic melancholic melodies,[48] symphonic orchestral arrangements,[48] ethnic folk traditional instruments[48] (featuring Armenian Duduk, Byzantine Kanoon, Tamboura, Oud, Kaval, and Cümbüş) and occasional female chants.