Originally founded as RPM (5) by Stephen Parsick, Lambert Ringlage, and Frank Makowski in the spring of 1996. Ringlage left the project the same autumn, which also prompted the band's name change as the original name stemmed from their three initials. The new moniker refers to the Dutch word "de ramp" which means "disaster" or "catastrophe" -- in order to avoid the name being pronounced the English way, the band´s name was written in phonetic spelling.

As a duo, Parsick and Makowski ventured into experimental ambient and electronic realms, giving birth to a style of music the band playfully refer to as doombient. ['ramp] also experimented through collaborations with other artists, the soprano Martina Beine was the first of these and joined the band for a short while in 1997 but left the next year due to artistic differences. Between 1997 and 2003, the second and third incarnation of ['ramp] released a string of albums and played a couple of concerts in the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany before activities were forced to come to a halt in early 2003. In 2005, the release of the 2001 concert recording of the Jodrell Bank performance ("oughtibridge") promised a return from the graveyard with a vengeance, and even though another five albums followed in the wake of "oughtibridge", the relationship within the band was no longer the same and had deteriorated significantly. In fact, ever growing tension and long standing disagreements between the two remaining founding members finally tore the band apart in the summer of 2008. In 2009, Parsick continued ['ramp] as another solo enterprise which allowed him to focus on more traditional styles of electronic music (which originally were the inspiration to form ['ramp] at all) while using his name for releasing more experimental ambient music.