After playing in British punk band Crisis, post punk act Death In June and his own personal project Above The Ruins, Tony Wakeford founded Sol Invictus in 1987, involving Ian Read and shortly later Karl Blake of Lemon Kittens and Shock Headed Peters. The music of Sol Invictus on the first recordings was a mixture of acoustic and electronic sounds, creating some epic and dramatic songs which stand against the decadence of the West and of modern society. This sound characterizes the first three albums, Against The Modern World (1988), In The Jaws Of The Serpent (1989) and Lex Talionis (1990). In 1991 Ian Read left the band to form Fire + Ice, and Wakeford took the sound of Sol Invictus progressively more towards a dark folk approach with changing line-up, such as violinist Matt Howden and singer and instrumentist Sally Doherty. Wakeford’s recent lyrics tended away from anti-modernism towards more personal themes. Sol Invictus’ own self-produced label was S.V.L. Records, then called Cerne and finally Tursa.