The fans of bands like the Sisters, Bauhaus and Siouxsie liked to dress 
up in lots of black. The music they liked was something of a backlash 
against the colourful disco music of the seventies. The Banshees were a 
punk band before they mellowed and punk was brathing its last as Gothdom
gathered speed, and the so one could claim Gothdom grew out of punk. The 
music of Joy Division, the Sisters and Bauhaus was angst ridden but all 
the hatred was turned inwards and the music was typified by introspective 
lyrics. Many of the new Goth followers were introspective too. Some were
a bit confused by the label and started to think that the label Goth was 
in some way connected with the Victorian Gothic revival and Gothic horror 
and because enough of them thought that eventually it became true. 

NME and Sounds were not oblivious to this and produced many hilarious 
articles poking fun at the Goths amongst their readers. They said that 
being Goth was about sitting around in circles on thefloor of pubs (bars) 
smoking a lot and talking about being a bat. Luckily most Goths have a good 
enough sense of humour to laugh at themselves once in a while. The first 
generation Goths complain that second and third generation Goths often 
seem to think that Gothdom is about wearing the blackest black, with a 
lot of silver jewellery and looking as thin and pale as possible. In 
common with their older bretheren they avoid the crass comercialism of
mainstream rock and gather together to share their woes :-) They read 
Bram Stoker and Anne Rice and talk about being vampires. They read H.P. 
Lovecraft and talk about the end of the world. 

The sounds that were described as Gothic were appearing in other countries 
besides the UK in the late seventies, but I have yet to see any evidence 
that they were using the word. Currently Germany is the bastion of Goth, 
where they are called Grufties. So that's how we got where we are today. 
Today Goth is about music, literature, art and about clothes.