The Djs and producers Claus Terhoeven (Nic Chagall) and Stefan Bossems (DJ Bossi), met in 1997 while they had several releases with different projects for the X-IT Label in Cologne. In November 1998 the duo met by chance in a studio, and decided to do a track together. The end result was a track called The Drums and the duo's first exploration in to hard trance. So Cosmic Gate was born. At this point the group was forced to quit their resident dj