A question from Yahoo! Answers:

What is Goth?

I wanna know what goth is. I am goth, and has no clue what it is. I wish I did. . .

The Goths were an East Germanic tribe who are believed to have left Scandinavia in the 1st century AD, initially settled in present-day Poland, and by the and of the 2nd century expanded to a large part of Eastern Europe. Goths were one of the first “barbaric” groups to successfully invade the Roman Empire.

The “Goth” subculture started in the UK as an offshoot of post-punk. In the UK, there were several post-punk bands that were called “gothic” in the late 1970s (opinions differ as to how the word “gothic” became associated with post-punk). In the early 1980s, gothic rock became its own subgenre within post-punk, and followers of gothic rock bands started to come together as a distinctly recognizable movement. The movement further solidified with the opening of the Batcave club in London in July 1982, which has become the primary “Gothic” stomping ground…

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth