The first usage of the term Dark Wave appears to have been in the 1980s, to describe the dark and melancholy variant of New Wave and Post-punk music, e.g. the early Gothic rock,the French Coldwave or dark Synthpop and refers to the dark and moody music of bands such as Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Chameleons, Cocteau Twins, Gary Numan etc.

In the course of time, different Dark Wave genres, especially Coldwave, Gothic rock and others, blended up with electronic music. Attrition, Clan of Xymox, Die Form, Psyche, In The Nursery and Pink Industry were some of the main bands playing this music in the 1980s.

In the '90s Dark Wave survived and experienced a fresh impetus through the music of bands such as Deine Lakaien, Love Is Colder Than Death, Corpus Delicti, The Frozen Autumn, the early music of Love Like Blood, Wolfsheim and Diary of Dreams. All of these bands followed a straight-line path, based on the New Wave and Post-punk movement of the 1980s. Other bands, such as Silke Bischoff, In My Rosary, Engelsstaub, Annabelle's Garden and Canticum Funebris mingled dark Synthpop or Goth rock with elements of the Neofolk or Neoclassical genre. A curious act is the German artist Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows, which combined Gothic rock elements with Folklore and medieval sounds.

Since 1993/94, in the United States, the term Darkwave became largely associated with the Projekt Records label because it was used as the name of their printed catalog and was used to market and promote German products of artists like Project Pitchfork in the US. The Projekt label features bands such as Lycia, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Love Spirals Downwards, Tearwave and Autumn's Grey Solace, all characterized by slow, moody ethereal female vocals, which had been an element in the music of some of the 1980s bands like Cocteau Twins. This music is often referred to as Ethereal Darkwave.