Steeleye Span are an English folk rock band formed in 1969. Still active today, along with Fairport Convention, they are amongst the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat". They had four Top 40 albums and achieved a certified gold record with sales of "All Around My Hat". Throughout their history, Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes.

For much of the 1980s, the members of the band tended to focus on outside projects of various sorts. Johnson opened a restaurant and then studied for a degree in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Pegrum ran a music studio. Prior and Kemp devoted much energy to their own band (The Maddy Prior Band; see Maddy Prior (solo albums)), recording 4 albums, and also had children together. The result was that the band's output dropped sharply, producing only three albums over the space of ten years (including a concert album), although the band continued touring.  After a quiet spell, the group's 12th studio album (and first without Tim Hart) Back in Line was released on the Flutterby label in 1986. With no "relaunch" as such, the band retained a low profile, although their recording of "Blackleg Miner" (previously an obscure song from an 1844 strike) became a political anthem for the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984-5 and was used to intimidate working miners. Steeleye Span continued to perform the song live and included a different version on their 1986 release Back in Line, which put greater stress on the line that threatens death against blacklegs.  In 1989, two long-term members departed. One was bassist Rick Kemp, who needed to recover from a serious shoulder injury, exacerbated by playing bass on stage. His eventual replacement (after two tours, each with a different bassist) was Tim Harries, who was brought in less than two weeks before the band was scheduled to start a tour. A friend of Pegrum's, Harries was a self-taught rock bassist, as well as a classically trained pianist and double bassist. With Harries on board, Steeleye released Tempted and Tried (1989), an album that formed the basis for their live set for many years to come.  Not long after recording Tempted, drummer Nigel Pegrum emigrated to Australia for personal relationship reasons. He was replaced by eccentric drummer Liam Genockey of Gillan, easily identified by his long, plaited beard. He and Knight were simultaneously members of "Moire Music", a free-jazz band with a classical flavour, led by Trevor Watts. Unlike Pegrum, who employed a traditional rock drumming style, Genockey favoured a more varied drumming style, influenced by both Irish and African drumming, in which he hit, brushed, and rubbed the various surfaces of his drums and cymbals, creating a more varied range of sounds. Consequently, when the band embarked on their 20th Anniversary Tour, they did so with a totally new rhythm section.  Both Harries and Genockey were interested in experimenting with the band's sound, and they helped re-energise the other members' interest in Steeleye. The band began reworking some of their earlier material, seeking new approaches to traditional favourites. For example, Johnson experimented with an arrangement of "Tam Lin" that involved a heavy Bulgarian influence, inspired by Eastern European versions of the Tam Lin legend. In 1992, the band released Tonight's the Night...Live, which demonstrates some of this new energy and direction. The band continued to tour the UK every year, and frequently toured overseas as well.

What were the wilderness years?