Since their inception, ESG has affected post-punk, no wave, dance-punk, hip-hop, and various styles of dance music such as house. They fell in with the late '70s and early '80s NYC no wave and post-punk scene, they had their music sampled countless times, and they became a playlist staple at '70s and early '80s dance clubs like the Paradise Garage and the Music Box.

ESG (Emerald, Sapphire and Gold) formed in 1978 in the South Bronx. The band originally consisted of the four Scroggins sisters -- Deborah (bass, vocals), Marie (congas, vocals), Renee (vocals, guitar), and Valerie (drums); although line-up changes have happened many times since their formation, including bandmembers who were neighbors, daughters of original members, and even male band members.

The Scroggins mother bought the band's instruments when they were still teenagers to keep them supposedly busy and away from trouble. They had to teach themselves their instruments, but it wasn't long before they started playing shows and clubs. Soon, Ed Bahlman, the owner of 99 Records (a record shop and a label that included Y Pants, Liquid Liquid, Bush Tetras, and Konk on its roster), was impressed enough to take them under his wing as a manager and producer. Consequentially, ESG and their music fell in with the no wave and post-punk scene of New York City thereafter, even though their music was neither abrasive in anyway or art conscious -- but the group's sparse, heavily rhythmic, and unpolished sound fit right into the New York scene in which Bahlman's label was a significant factor. Bahlman booked them successfully at punk clubs and they were a hit in the underground NYC scene.

After a few singles and EPs in the late '70s and early '80s the band hooked up with Factory Records producer Martin Hannett while he was in the area recording A Certain Ratio's first album, "To Each" in 1981. The 6 song ESG 12" EP on 99 Records from the same year features a particularly unique and widely sampled track, UFO, using Hannett's fondness for reverb, flangers and feedback to make a song that was so unusual it has been very widely sampled, along with other tracks from that record. That EP is a rarity on vinyl that is highly prized by DJs and copies typically sell on Ebay for about $50 with only a dozen or so copies surfacing there in recent years.

Their first full-length LP came with 1983's Come Away with ESG. Unfortunately, their record label had to soon close because of Bahlman's legal battle with Sugarhill over Grandmaster Flash's sampling of Liquid Liquid's "Optimo" caused him financial and mental stress, with Sugarhill's fall into receivership -- and inability to award 99 Records their due settlement -- acting as the final straw. With the closing of 99 Records, ESG disbanded shortly thereafter (1984), but re-formed in the early '90s, heralding their comeback with a self-titled 1991 compilation of previously released material.

In the years since their original formation, the group's work had become popular among hip-hop artists searching for samples, with such acts as TLC, Wu-Tang Clan, Beastie Boys, Big Daddy Kane, Gang Starr, Tricky, Jay Dee (J-Dilla) on his Donuts album, and indie rockers like Unrest and Liars. The group addressed this issue on the 1992 12" EP Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills. The album, ESG Live!, was release in 1995 and featured both old and new material.

The band played what was to be their final show on Friday, September 21, 2007 at Chicago's Abbey Pub, during the Estrojam festival. But the band announced that they reformed in 2008 to play their first returning show at NYC's Santos House Party on September 13, 2008. They also claimed that both more shows and new music will emerge in the future.

Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Koch on June 2, 1959 in Rochester, New York) is a controversial American post-punk singer, spoken word artist, poet, writer, photographer, and actress. Her extensive, 30-year-plus body of multimedia work is characterized by its extreme obsessiveness with the darkness of the human psyche, often focusing on nihilism, rage, violence, eroticism, surrealism, and pornographic art as key points of topic.

After arriving in New York City at the age of 16, she worked as a bar maid and go-go dancer at the Baby Doll Lounge on White street in Tribeca. Lydia met Suicide (who become her first friend in NYC) and Willy DeVille (who gave her the name 'Lunch' because she'd often been stealing lunch for The Dead Boys). Then she moved in for about a year with then-boyfriend James Chance (born James Siegfried) who had come to New York (from Milwaukee) in the last week of 1975. They lived at a funky two-room fifth-floor walk-up apartment on East 2nd street (between Avenue A and B) and at a tiny storefront on Twelfth street.

Lunch moved into a large communal household of artists and musicians in NYC, including Kitty Bruce, daughter of Lenny Bruce. After befriending the 'godfathers of punk' Suicide at Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential No Wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks in 1976 with her artistic partner, James Chance. Both appeared on the seminal No Wave compilation No New York. Lunch later appeared on two songs on Chance's album Off White (credited to James White and the Blacks; Lunch used the pseudonym "Stella Rico") in 1978.

She appeared in two films directed by the husband and wife film-making team of Scott B and Beth B; In the short film Black Box (1978) she played an unnamed torturer, and in the feature length, neo-noir thriller Vortex (1982) she played a private detective named "Angel Powers". During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by Vivienne Dick, including She Had her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co starring with Pat Place.

In the mid-'80s she formed her own recording and publishing company called "Widowspeak" on which she continued to release a slew of her own material, including songs and spoken word.

A self-avowed "confrontationalist", identified by the Boston Phoenix as "one of the 10 most influential performers of the '90s", Lunch's solo career featured collaborations with musicians such as J. G. Thirlwell, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, Billy Ver Plank, Steven Severin, Robert Quine, Sadie Mae, Rowland S. Howard, Michael Gira, The Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Die Haut and Black Sun Productions. She also acted in, wrote, and directed underground films, sometimes collaborating with underground filmmaker and musician Richard Kern (including several films, such as Fingered, in which she performed unsimulated sex acts), and more recently has recorded and performed as a spoken word artist, collaborating with such artists as Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Don Bajema, Hubert Selby Jr., and Emilio Cubeiro, as well as authoring both traditional books and comix (with award-winning graphic novel artist Ted McKeever).

Simon Reynolds (author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984) wrote: "And although 'affection' is possibly an odd word to use in reference to a bunch of nihilists, I do feel fond of the No Wave people. ... there are great moments throughout Lydia Lunch's long discography." Selected quotations: I'm nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible - but not obliterated, yet. I would be humiliated if I found out that anything I did actually became a commercial success. There're enough happy assholes out there, why should I be another one in the line... It seems to me, that for over two thousand years now; mad-men, maniacs, and would be messiahs have been pilfering, have been pillaging, have been plundering, and have been raping the entire planet; and the way I see it, Mother Nature is getting pretty pissed off. No pornography exploits women. It exploits men. It's the men that are made to look stupid, silly and ridiculous, chasing after the golden elixir. Women look beautiful, do what they wanna do and get paid for it. The only way to define the art of Lydia Lunch is simply not to.