The Sisters of Mercy are an English gothic rock ban that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output as a strike against their record company. Currently, the band is kept alive as a touring outfit only. The band's symbol was inspired by a common illustration in Anatomy textbooks, namely that illustrating the anterior and posterior triangles of the neck. Specifically, it was noticed by Andrew Eldritch in the early medical student's bible Gray's Anatomy.