In 1995, Lucassen released an album uncredited to any artist called "Ayreon: The Final Experiment", in which he sang, wrote every song and played most of the instruments. The album conducted to the creation of Ayreon; despite being relatively unknown at first, the project gained notable attention and praise with the release of its third album "Into the Electric Castle", establishing Lucassen as a notable composer of rock operas. Following Ayreon's success, Lucassen has been involved in many other projects: he is the creator, composer and current guitarist/keyboardist of Star One, Guilt Machine, and The Gentle Storm, and the creator and former guitarist of Ambeon and Stream of Passion. He composes and writes most of his songs, but leaves the lyrics to his musical partners in some of his projects.