Bypass was founded by five young West Berlin idealists in 1987. The city was a wild frontier of decadence surrounded on all sides by a grey, Communist regime. This environment helped to define the type of music Bypass would create. They incorporated elements of new wave, jazz-rock, indie rock, funk and dark wave into a pop sensibility. The result was an energetic sound which was hard to define. The group played live in clubs all over East and West Germany before splitting up just as the Berlin Wall fell in late 1989. A CD of six songs recorded in early 1989, documenting the group's sonic experiments during those turbulent times, was released in 2002.