The history of Suntrip starts around 2001, when Fabien “Mars” and Joske “Anoebis” met each other online on the website: “psynews.org” (which had the name “goatrance.free.fr” back then). In those years the magical old styled Goa-trance they loved so much was rapidly fading away. Online they saw that the interest in this genre was still alive, and this caused first talks about starting a label. First, in the summer of 2002 they threw a big party together in Belgium called “Psynews Summer Launch”. There they discovered working together went well. When in 2003 another member of the psynews forum called “Jannis Tzikas/Filteria” sent them music, all puzzle pieces came together. The label was born, and their focus was clear: bringing old school Goa-trance to the modern crowd with modern production! This resulted in a first release in November 2004 by Filteria!
Learning how to run a label, they continued working with more & more artists and soon they had an average of 2-3 CD-releases per year. Without realising at that time, a lot of classics were released: Ra – 9th, Khetzal – Corolle, VA’s Apsara & Opus Iridium and the rerelease of Dimension 5 – Transdimensional.
The big breakthrough of Suntrip happened around 2014. A 10-year tour was organised and brought the music to all corners of the world. From Brazil to Japan, from Serbia to Portugal. Some artists of Suntrip started to get more famous around this period as well (Filteria, E-Mantra, Goasia, Ra,…) and this meant many festivals started to plan a few hours of Goa-Trance on their line up ! Amazing after so many years of absence. Slowly artists who were active in the 90s saw this evolution and this resulted in more releases of 90s artists as well (Shakta, Denshi Danshi, Ray Castle, Dimension 5,…).
The label kept on growing and Fabien and Jos, who were doing all this work after their daily job, started to get help from Chris and several volunteers as well. Slowly the number of releases also rose to 4 or 5 per year. In 2017 another big step was taken, their first vinyl release. The “let there be light” EP by Astral Projection. And that’s not all, around the same period Chris, Fabien and Jos decided to do an international festival: Apsara. The first edition happened in 2018 in Romania and was a success.
In 2019 another big step was taken. Because of new sites like bandcamp, the amount of people buying Goa-trance in digital format rose. Unfortunately, a lot of old releases were totally unavailable. Time to change that! The first sublabel of Suntrip Records was born: Classic Goa Trax. This label focuses only on digital rereleases of 90s artists and made sure the old guys got their piece of the pie again! Kobi Harosh, a big collector from Israel, helped them from the start with this label.
The new decade started with the Corona lockdowns. This meant the cancellation of Apsara and… more time to focus on music. This resulted in more vinyl releases (Gamma Draconis, Corolle) which were all a success. Since that moment the label has focused on both CD and vinyl releases. Because the amount of work kept rising and Fabien also had other interests, he stopped officially with Suntrip 2022, after 18 years of being Co-manager. He sold his part to Chris, who is now together with Joske, the official owner of Suntrip Records.
In the last few years, the label was very active with new releases and with organising events. Both small events in Belgium as Apsara festival in Hungary. Suntrip also hosts the Goa-trance stage of Surya Spirits festival (Belgium) and the last day with futuristic Goa-trance on ZNA festival in Portugal.
In 2025 some other milestones were taken. A new sublabel (Ooze Tale) saw the daylight, focussing on Melodic forest and more experimental psy-trance with a weird twist. This label started with a group of Belgian music freaks and friends (Tomas, Milan, Ramesh, Viktor & Joske). Also, this year saw another edition of Apsara Festival. There Suntrip met Niki. Immediately this cooperation was working well and now she is also helping Suntrip with the daily label work.