Cosmic Gate – 25 Year Legacy, New Album & Global Tour

With classics like “Exploration of Space” amassing over 40 million streams on Spotify, Grammy-nominated duo Cosmic Gate have firmly proved themselves as one of the most enduring acts in electronic music. Hailing from Krefeld, Germany, Claus Terhoeven (aka Nic Chagall) and Stefan Bossems (aka Bossi) first crossed paths in a Cologne studio in the late Nineties — an encounter that sparked a musical partnership like no other. From that moment on, they built a legacy with critically renowned albums, standout singles like “Nothing to Hide”, “Hear Me Out”, and “Your Mind”, and era-defining anthems such as “am2pm”, “Fall Into You”, “Fire Wire”.

Fueled by their behind-the-deck boundless energy and seamless synergy, Cosmic Gate continues to set dance floors ablaze, delivering performances at the biggest festivals worldwide, including Tomorrowland, EDC, and Ultra. Their remix work is just as diverse, from legendary Hollywood composer James Horner (Avatar, Titanic) to dance music icons like Armin van Buuren and Tiësto.

Now, as they embark on their next chapter with their anticipated album Perspectives set for release in 2025, we sat down, once again, with them.

Congratulations on your new album Perspectives! it will be released in three separate EPs. This is a unique release approach. What made you decide to go down this route? 

To be very honest, the fast pace of our times, which in ways seems to be even more accelerated in the music scene, made us wonder a bit and look for alternative ways to release and market our music. We are fans of albums though, as we feel it gives opportunities and musical freedom to the artist, and maybe a certain standing and credibility on top as well. 

The downside of the fast pace for releasing a full album under these circumstances is quite substantial. It feels like two weeks after the release, it’s already yesterday’s news in a way. It happened to us that fans asked for more music just weeks after we released a brand new full album, which we had worked on for over a year, and moments like this left us wondering, to say the least. Such experiences made us think about how best we can adapt to the status quo. All of this made us come up with the idea of releasing the album in parts, which is 3 individual EPs as we plan now for Perspectives. We feel that every track gets the chance of receiving more attention, and more time to thrive and get recognition and playtime, without pushing the overall album concept out of sight.

2024 marked 25 years for Cosmic Gate—what does this anniversary mean to you both? 

Thinking about it, with the “20 Years – Forward Ever Backward Never” album we might’ve celebrated our 20 year anniversary more than last year’s 25 years! We are so busy In general that we just enjoy what we do, and to be relevant in the scene after so many years sure means the world to us, still giving us the chance to simply do what we love most, writing tracks and playing them out for our fans all over the globe – what could be any better!? 

You both come from Krefeld, Germany, but you met in Cologne. How did your journey together start? What led to you two crossing paths and forming Cosmic Gate?  

Yeah, so there is one word here, which simply describes it perfectly, or in another way, it doesn’t! We never were planning to FORM Cosmic Gate. To be frank, it happened by total chance. We were both from the same area in Germany, and by some time we had released music on the same label. So it happened that there was a remix that had to be done and the label somehow had several of its artists come together for it.

Long story short, in the end the two of us, for the first time ever, after everyone else left, stayed in the studio together. Then we just totally switched the musical subject, and decided to jam around and do something a bit harder hitting as we both recognised our liking for such a style that was developing back then. This session took like 3 hours, and fast forward, caught the attention of EMI Germany. This track, which was “The Drums”, went off and there we were, with the question, who is representing this project? We really thought it’s just another project, and we both had several projects going at this time. We decided to call it “Cosmic Gate”. 

So both of us being DJ’s, at first we played the gigs solo, then the shows got bigger, the follow up singles got even more successful, and after a while the crowd simply started to ask for the duo they knew from the videos or bigger shows like Trance Energy etc. As you see, Cosmic Gate simply happened, there was no match plan, there wasn’t actually even supposed to be a match! But here we are, so expect the unexpected, things sometimes happen and change your life, and that’s exactly what happened with us and Cosmic Gate.

If we look back to the start of your career, how would you describe how your sound has evolved over the last 25 years? 

In the end, music is a feeling, and certainly not easy to describe in just a few, or maybe even in many words. But sure, we’ll try. Let’s say we started out making hard trance /hard dance, then over the years turned to more tech/progressive and melodic sounds – we guess that’s how most would describe it, and we would absolutely agree. Even using all those genre terms though, what is most important to us is that we like to think that we have a certain kind of red line sound in our music – let’s maybe call it our specific “Cosmic Gate DNA signature sound” if you will. 

So no matter if it was back in 1999 doing the 140bpm sound, or now in 2025 on some 124bpm, as a good friend said, a CG track will always be recognisable in its unique ways. We do hope our fans would agree that we, in a way, are our own unique genre. We’re not just techno, progressive, melodic or trance, certainly a good mix of all of those, but always adding the most important ingredient – the X factor CG signature sound.

You’ve worked on remixes for big names like Tiësto and James Horner for Avatar.  Which remix stands out to you as the most challenging, or the one you’re most proud of? 

Avatar was maybe the most challenging, as we had to do the remix for this insane production that everyone was raving about before the release already, but without having seen the movie or any scenes out of it. So we gave it our best shot, and from what we know Mr. Horner picked our remix as the only official remix for “I See You”, which was a big honour coming from this undoubtedly legendary music and composer genius. 

You received a Grammy nomination in 2018 for your remix of “Only Road” by Gabriel & Dresden. How has the nomination affected your career since? 

This is hard to say. What we can say is that the nomination certainly was a highlight in our career, simply as the Grammys are not something an electronic band would usually be focused on. To be honest, we still to this day don’t know how we even made it on the nominee list for “Only Road”, we simply are glad it did!

The Perspectives Tour is perfectly timed with the release of your album. Are you making any changes to your live sets specific to this tour? 

Well, an album tour always puts the new music as the center of attention, and sure, we’ll do that. But this doesn’t mean that we won’t play classic tunes of ours though, and mix it with our current favourites from other producers, for the most fun event possible. So please join us for the Perspectives tour, we can’t wait to share a good time together!

You have performed at huge festivals such as Tomorrowland and Ultra as well as in legendary clubs such as Space in Miami. What’s your flavor? Festivals or smaller, more intimate venues? 

That’s an easy answer – we definitely choose both, each in their own individual way. We love the one-hour highlight sets with the big screens and stages as much as we enjoy extended long sets to take our crowd on a deep journey. Both have their own individual advantages over the other, but we wouldn’t want to miss either one. It wouldn’t be perfect without the addition of the other to make a well rounded tour schedule as we prefer it.

You’ve always been at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of trance music. Where do you think the genre is right now, and how do you see it evolving in the next few years? 

If we only knew this new direction upfront, that’d be great! Fun aside, we feel trance as a part of the electronic music scene is in a good state. To be clear though, we do see the word “trance” maybe a bit different than most, not as puristic as some other people would.

Melodic techno for example, is very trance-influenced, and a lot of the progressive and techno scene is as well, and such tracks are ones that we consider as trance or important for trance. And exactly those are the genres from which we pick our tracks to play. We do not discriminate, nor let genres limit or defy us. Our idea of what we do is, if we like it, we play it, what’s stated on the sticker isn’t of interest to us. Our taste makes the call, not some random algorithm or marketing team.

 With so many achievements under your belts and after so many years in the game, is there anything Cosmic Gate is yearning to accomplish?

We’ve been thinking about it now for a while, but there isn’t really anything we could think of. Maybe if technology evolves as quickly as it does, we might have the chance to play EOS in Space. That’d be cool and a great way of rounding up our story for another brilliant chapter!