The band name was inspired by a French fashion magazine.
In the beginning of their career, they did the opener for Fad Gadget[?] gigs. Depeche mode were one of the most successful of the New Wave bands.
After the release of their first album (Speak & Spell) song-writer Clarke left the band to found first Yazoo with Alison Moyet and later Erasure with Andy Bell[?]. Alan Wilder[?] joined the band as a replacement for Clarke and Martin Gore took over the song-writing.
In the 1980s the bands popularity was largely confined to Britain and Europe and their style was Synth pop, in the 1990s the band became popular in America, they started to fill large staduiums and their sound became somewhat less electronic.
In June 1995 after the Songs of Faith and Devotion album/tour Alan Wilder left the band because of unsatisfactory internal working conditions to start his project Recoil.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump