Goth Industrial Music

From what I understand, "gothic" was used initially as a kind of insult when describing art or an aesthetic style. It meant "uncivilized" and "barbaric".

Then there's the apocryphal story of Bauhaus describing their music as "gothic" when compared to other contemporary bands, deliberately embracing that meaning of barbaric and uncultured.

From then on the music press ran with the term, but as with most genres it's a blunt tool for describing a sound or a style. A lot of bands from the same era who had some crossover or shared elements with goth bands were pigeon-holed as goth themselves, which they felt was restrictive and didn't accurately describe their sound.

For example, listen to The Cure's "Hanging Garden" and Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead". Both songs share a similar claustrophobic atmosphere but beyond that they sound very different.