NIGHTWISH actually had their hour of birth back in 1996 when Tuomas Holopainen and some friends were gathered around a campfire and improvised some songs that should become the band's first material. The very first three NIGHTWISH tracks were recorded between October and December 1996 with a line up consisting of Tuomas, Tarja Turunen and Emppu Vuorinen.In May 1997, NIGHTWISH signed a record deal with Spinefarm and began, together with new entrant Jukka Nevalainen on drums, recording their debut 'Angel's Fall First' which was released in following November.

NIGHTWISH's trademarks – the mixture of highly melodic Metal with Tarja's soprano opera voice – brought fresh air in the scene and jockeyed them on position 31 of the Finnish album charts. During summer 1998, bass player Sami Vänskä joined NIGHTWISH and the band entered the studio once again in August. 1999 'Oceanborn' got in stores and made NIGHTWISH the new Finnish shooting stars. The album reached position 5 in Finland's album charts and the single 'Sacrament Of Wilderness' could hold the pole position of the single charts for weeks! Successful tours and appearances at almost all big European festivals followed.
On time of the big German solar eclipse in August 1999, 'Sleeping Sun', one of NIGHTWISH's most haunting ballads, was issued and sold more than 15.000 copies alone in Germany!

The next longplayer 'Wishmaster' absolved an absolute dream start: It entered the Finnish album charts on position 1 and gained a golden record within only three weeks. Foreign hit lists got broken as well: 'Wishmaster' entered the German media control charts on # 21 and France on # 66 and reaped loads of prices.

Back home after a lot of tours – including Europe and South America – NIGHTWISH filmed and recorded a concert in the Finnish city Tampere and released the material either as live CD 'Over The Hills And Far Away' (plus four new songs including the Gary Moore cover 'Over The Hills And Far Away') and some time later as live CD/VHS/DVD under the name 'From Wishes To Eternity' (plus the band's clips and a lot of bonus material). In late 2001, Marco Hietala from SINERGY became NIGHTWISH's new bass player and further on the band also included male vocals in their songs which fitted the over-all sound of NIGHTWISH very well.'Century Child' in 2002 earned double platinum in Finland for more than 60.000 sold copies and finally sealed NIGHTWISH's status as Scandinavia's mega stars.

The metal documentary DVD 'End Of Innocence' with extended interviews, backstage and live footage, music videos and photo galleries was the only NIGHTWISH release in 2003, afterwards the band started off a little break to recover from all the turbulences.With 'Once', NIGHTWISH set themselves a monument.

After the unbelievable success of 'Once' and the two singles 'Nemo' und 'Wish I Had An Angel', 'The Siren' is the third single – and it will conquer the world! The Song is definitely one of the outstanding songs of the best sold Nightwish album till today. Since the release of 'Once' the band played in front of over one million fans (In Stuttgart, 10 000 people wanted to see the band!). 'The Siren' was one of the highlights in the live repertoire of Nightwish. The song shows the band from their symphonic and classical influenced side – heavy, majestic and unique for sure!