FairLight is formed out of the ashes of the famous West Coast Crackers (WCC). The reason for the split is unknown, but is widely considered to be a clash of egos. The story goes that during an internal WCC meeting on the island of ╓land, arguments arose out of such a simple thing as who was going to sleep in the only bed available in the small house that had been rented for the meeting. Of course No.1 wanted to use the bed, but since WCC wasn't "his" group, he had a hard time assering himself.

So the meeting was quite sour, to say the least. On the train back to Malm÷, No.1 and Galahad of WCC started thinking about starting their own group where they wouldn't have to take shit from anybody. The idea was appealing to both youngsters, and so the search for a name began...

Quite a few suggestions for a name were thrown around, but finally No.1 came up with "FairLight"... It was brilliant! The name took a while to stick in the young inspiring minds, but finally they decided to go ahead with it! Rumor has it that the name was chosen from the cult ZX Spectrum game at the time with the same name.

Upon arriving back to Malm÷, the decision was announced to the leaders of WCC and the world. A new ambitious group was born. It seemed fitting to start completely anew, so our two heroes made the hard decision to drop their old handles and choose new ones. No.1 became Strider and Galahad became Black Shadow.

The remaining members of West Coast Crackers also felt the need to start anew and formed a new group called Relax. So, the old legend WCC was laid to rest.

Immediately the recruiting started, since the new group needed some more members. LFK, a respected "loner" operating completely on his own was called and convinced to join the new group. He, soon thereafter, chose the name Gollum. Apparently Tolkien's fantasy world was very inspiring to the FairLight members, as many took their handles based on his characters.

Other early members were Woodo from Denmark and Hobbit, a graphics wizard from Belgium. The membership looked like this in the early days;

• Strider (founder and C64 cracker)
• Black Shadow (founder and C64 cracker)
• Gollum (C64 cracker)
• Woodo (C64 cracker and coder)
• Hobbit (graphics wizard)

December 13th, 1988

Strider brought in members from the group Oneway. Gollum was pretty pissed off by the "many new members". It was a sort of tactical move by Strider to allow him to focus on the Amiga. The new members were;

• Bacchus (cracker, coder, organizer)
• Grayhawk (swapper)
• Wedge (musician)
• Questor (swapper who was in for about two weeks, but was so scared that he would be kicked so he left, returning to Oneway)
• Phred (coder, graphician and musician)

January 1989

As one of the last major decisions before fully concentrating on the Amiga, Strider brought in members of the Swedish group Heptagon;

• Salt/The Alchemist - A highly qualified cracker that really strengthened the cracking section. Adrian is still in the group on the "Hall of Fame" section of the memberlist.
• Pepa - Hacker who actually did very little for the group, but whom Strider liked a lot for being a kewl dude. Pepa left the group rather soon after joining.
• Viper - An organizer, swapper and to some extent also a cracker. He's best of all known for a major lot of talk, and for being very skilled in the art of exaggeration and remembering and being able to cover it up. He's an overall nice person, if he only lerned to control his bragging and keep to the truth. Viper was kicked after a year for bringing shame over the group with his talk.