Stratovarius was founded in 1984 by three guys from Helsinki, Finland; drummer and vocalist Tuomo Lassila, bass player John Vihervä and guitarist Staffan Stråhlman. Before Stratovarius the same line up performed under name Black Water. The music of early Stratovarius was very different from what it is today. Back then it was heavily influenced by Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. Guitar player Staffan brought in some classical elements. Bass player John left the band by the end of 1984 and was replaced by Jyrki Lentonen, who previously played with Timo Tolkki in a band called Road Block.

1985 Staffan did not want to play in Stratovarius anymore and he left one week before the band was supposed to play one gig in Aalborg, Denmark. Tuomo Lassila phoned to Timo Tolkki and asked him to join the band. Timo learned all the songs from cassette tape and after a few rehearsals the band travelled to Denmark. At that time Tuomo was still singing and playing the drums at the same time. It soon became evident that the band needed a singer because Tuomo's vocal range. However, good singers are few and far between and so Timo Tolkki took over the vocal duties. At this point the music was starting to sound more like it is today: very melodic and classically influenced. Timo Tolkki brought along his influences; Blackmore, Rainbow and Baroque music. The band rehearsed and gigged extensively in Helsinki and made its first demo tape under this line up in 1987. It contained songs Future Shock, Fright Night and Night Screamer.

The demos were sent to various record companies in Finland and CBS Finland wanted to sign the band after seeing a show at Tavastia Club, Helsinki. At this point the band had a new keyboard player Antti Ikonen. The band recorded its first single Future Shock in 1988. This was followed by another single Black Night in the beginning of 1989 and finally the debut album Fright Night saw daylight in May 1989.

The band gigged extensively during the summer and autumn 1989 and played a huge outdoor gig Giants Of Rock in Hämeenlinna with Anthrax and many other metal acts. After all this bass player Jyrki Lentonen left the band. New material was written and demoed early 1990 but CBS lost interest of releasing more Stratovarius material. The band did not give up but rehearsed a lot and made new songs and finally went to record the follow-up to Fright Night. All this time the band didn't have a record contract and it had to finance the recordings by itself. Timo played all the bass parts even though there is a photo of a new bassist Jari Behm in Twilight Time actually play on the album. Soon Jari was asked to leave the band because his style of playing did not fit to the band's music at all.

The second album called II was released in Finland early 1992. At this point it was pretty clear that the market for Stratovarius was outside Finland. Many tapes were sent all over the world and Shark Records wanted to sign the band after hearing the song Hands Of Time. Finally II was released with a new cover and a new name Twilight Time in October 1992 all over the Europe. Soon import copies started to spread to the Japanese market and "Twilight Time" was five months in Top 10 of import disks in Japan. Eventually it became the best selling import album in Japan in 1993. The band also got a big record contract with JVC Victor Entertainment in Japan which released Twilight Time in July 1993. Timo Tolkki flew to Japan for the first time in the same month to do promotion and saw that the bands popularity was skyrocketing with enthusiastic fans. The spare time between searching for the record deal was spent on writing new material and the band recorded new songs during the whole year 1993. Also a new bass player Jari Kainulainen joined the band as 70% of the new material was already recorded. At this time Tuomo Lassila had a severe stress injury in his both hands and was not able to play drums for 8 weeks. The record had to be completed with Kingston Wall drummer Sami Kuoppamäki, who played on 4 tracks.

Finally the third album Dreamspace was released worldwide in February and March 1994. It was highly praised among the critics and took the bands popularity to a different level. It contained such all time Stratovarius classics as Dreamspace, 4th Reich and Chasing Shadows to name a few. In June the band headed to Japan for the first tour and played concerts in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya seeing Japanese fans face to face for the first time. In Finland they played just one gig before heading for Japan in the now defunct, legendary Shadow Club in Helsinki. This was also Jari Kainulainen's very first live appearance with Stratovarius.

New material was written from the spring to summer 1994 and band hit the studio once again with very good vibes from Japan Tour. Timo Tolkki fulfilled his long time dream by recording the solo album Classical Variations And Themes. It contained songs like Fire Dance Suite, which was originally written for Stratovarius back in 1986, Lord Of The Rings and many other classically influenced tracks. The album was released in October 1994. Stratovarius spent the whole summer of 1994 in studio finishing its fourth album.

At this stage Timo Tolkki decided that his singing days were over and that the band should find a proper singer to take the band's sound even further. As advertisements were put to local music papers, somebody remembered a guy from Lappajärvi, Finland, who had approached the band one and half years earlier. So Timo Kotipelto got a phone call from Timo Tolkki and an audition was arranged. The band jammed some songs and as the new guy opened his mouth for the first time, everybody knew that he was the new singer.

Timo's sound can be heard all over the bands fourth release Fourth Dimension. The title of the album says it all and the sound and the songs on this album were something totally different than before but still the musical style remained as true Stratovarius metal. Fourth Dimension was released worldwide in March 1995 and it doubled the sales of Dreamspace.

The band toured heavily playing shows in all over Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Finland, Greece and Japan. After all these tours Tuomo Lassila and Antti Ikonen, the long time members were asked to leave the band. There were many reasons for this line up change, the most important were personal chemistry and musical differences. The guys just couldn't play the material that was developing in Timo Tolkki's mind.

After the success of Fourth Dimension Timo Tolkki and Timo Kotipelto wanted to take the bands music even further. New drummer Jörg Michael and new keyboard player Jens Johansson entered the band.

The mixing of bands fifth album Episode took place at Finnvox Studios in Helsinki. This album was once again a huge step forward for the band. With the fresh attitude and sound of Johansson and Michael the result was dramatic, melodic and symphonic metal album. Also for the first time a choir of 40 singers and a string orchestra of 20 players were used. The album contains some Stratovarius classics as Father Time, Eternity and Will The Sun Rise?.

Stratovarius' next album Visions was released in the April of 1997 and it hit the Finnish charts position #5 in an instant. It spent a total of 24 weeks on the Finnish Top 40. Visions also launched an extensive tour, during which Stratovarius entertained not only Finns but also their fans in Japan, Europe and South America. Visions exceeded the gold disc plateau of 20.000 sold copies in Finland and the gold disc was celebrated at Tavastia Club in Helsinki June 10th 1998 with a little party and a special gig with a couple of unusual song choices.

During Visions tour Stratovarius recorded their first live album, double CD Visions Of Europe, which was released late March 1998.

April 1998 Stratovarius started rehearsing their new studio material for the forthcoming album, their seventh full length studio release Destiny. The album was recorded at Finnvox Studios during the spring and summer of 1998 and the release date was October 5th 1998. Destiny debuted on the Finnish charts on position #1.

The coming of the year 1999 saw Stratovarius again surpassing the gold disc plateau with Destiny and this was but sign of more fine things to come.

The closing half of 1999 the band spent in the studio building up their new studio album entitled Infinite. The album entered the Finnish Charts on the position #1 and kept that position for three weeks. The release of the album was followed by a huge tour which consisted of 25 countries and 82 shows in total.

2000 saw the band releas their first home video Infinite Visions on October 20th 2000. The video was released in VHS and DVD format and it includes over 2 hours of material from live performances, recording sessions and backstage plus all Stratovarius music videos.

After years of hard work and the success of Infinite the band decided to take a break to charge their batteries. Before that they wanted to give something special to the fans and also show that they're not splitting up. So the album Intermission was released. The album features four totally new songs, three covers, two live songs and songs which have been before released only as bonus tracks in different territories.

2003 saw the release of perhaps the bands finest hour to date The Elements Pt.1 followed up later in the year by The Elements Pt.2, however, all was not well in the camp. The band signed a mult-million $ deal to Sanctuary records then internal strife led to the departure of Jorg Michael and Timo Kotipelto. What the future lies in store is open to debate at this time.