[1] The original lineup of the band featured singer Franz Treichler, sampler player Cesare Pizzi and drummer Frank Bagnoud.

For most of their history, the band maintained a trio format with a singer, a sampler player and a drummer, albeit with multiple line-up changes.

Treichler is the band's sole consistent member; the current line-up also features Pizzi and drummer Bernard Trontin.

Their sample-based approach to rock music influenced numerous musicians such as David Bowie, The Edge and Mike Patton.

Circa 1984, Fribourg-native guitarist Franz Treichler relocated to Geneva and started experimenting with sound collages on his 4-track recorder,[2][3] following the dissolution of his punk band Jof & The Ram, previously known as Johnny Furgler & the Raclette Machine.

[2][4] Inspired by the sampling synthesizer E-mu Emulator,[5] he started composing songs from these sound collages in early 1985 and introduced his roommate, former the Raclette Machine bassist Cesare Pizzi, to the sampler.

[9] Their early performances were mostly guerrilla gigs, in which the band played at squats, factories and occupied public places illegally.

[11] The single cover art featured the band's logo carved onto Treichler's chest; in 2005, he stated that the scar "disappeared after five or six years".

[12] For their debut album, the band started working with former Swans member Roli Mosimann, who went on to become a long-time studio collaborator.

The band's self-titled debut was released in 1987 to critical acclaim in the United Kingdom:[7] the record was named as the best album of 1987 by music magazine Melody Maker.

[7] The drumming duties were first offered to Bernard Trontin, a friend of Treichler and band's then-future drummer; he refused due to his conflicting touring schedule.

[15] For the recording of the band's fourth album with Mosimann, Treichler located to New York, where he subsequently lived for a couple of years; other members joined them for six months.

[15][19] Music video for the album's lead single, "Kissing the Sun", was directed by Eric Zimmerman of H-Gun,[21] who is known for his work on Nine Inch Nails's "Head Like a Hole" and Soundgarden's "Jesus Christ Pose".

In 2005, the band started working on new material[24] and released the compilation album XXY: 20 Years (1985-2005), featuring career highlights and rarities.

In that year, the band played their anniversary shows in Montreux Jazz Festival and Willisau, Switzerland, followed by a European tour in November.

[3][30] The band's performance in Montreux, which was a collaboration with Lausanne Sinfonietta and featured guest vocals from Mike Patton, was later released as a live album in 2010.

[12] Trouser Press remarked that The Young Gods's "unusual vocals/sampler/drums configuration reconstructs rock from the ground up, producing a fiery collage of roaring guitars, blistering rhythms and Wagnerian orchestras, all presided over by Franz Treichler's leering, guttural voice".

[3] He has cited 60s psychedelia, Einstürzende Neubauten, Kraftwerk, punk rock movement and post-punk acts such as Killing Joke and Wire as influences on The Young Gods.

[54] The track "Lucidogen" from Second Nature illustrates "a fictitious drug which would make people more clairvoyant" and was inspired by an anti-World Trade Organization riot that Treichler witnessed in Geneva in 1998.

[56] On The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll, authors Simon Reynolds and Joy Press argued: "Treichler's lyrics brought out all the militaristic, fascistic tendencies inherent in Romanticism, Nietzsche et al., only to transcend and transfigure them";[58] in a 1995 interview, Treichler dismissed Reynolds's and Press's Nietzschean interpretation of his lyrics.

[8] I thought they had some extraordinary ideas, by taking one chunk guitar riff and then sampling it, looping it, and having that as the consistent pattern through a piece of music.

[59] U2 guitarist The Edge namedropped the band as an influence on his soundtrack work for 1990 musical adaptation of A Clockwork Orange and 1991's Achtung Baby.

[62] Other artists influenced by The Young Gods include Disco Inferno guitarist Ian Crause,[63] Sepultura,[64] Napalm Death,[65] Mike Patton,[3] Ministry,[66][67] Nine Inch Nails,[3] The Chemical Brothers,[68] Kill the Thrill[69] and Laika.