Mirage ”is a Soviet and then Russian musical group, working mainly in the style of Eurodisc. In 1985, composer and keyboardist Andrei Lityagin, student of the Moscow State Conservatory, vocalist Margarita Sukhankina, guitarist Sergei Proklov and vocalist Mikhail Kirsanov joined together in an amateur group "Activity Zone" and recorded their first demo under the name "Information from Newspapers". Initially, the soloist in the project “Activity Zone” was Mikhail Kirsanov, who composed poems and sang, and Andrei Lityagin played the keys. The direction of the team was new wave. “The songs were crazy,” Sukhankina recalled in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, “I roared, screamed, made some inhuman sounds.” A year later, in February 1986, the group received the name "Mirage" and soon settled in the SPM "Record", where Lityagin assembled a studio for professional recording. After some time, Lityagin composed 12 compositions, on which the poet Valery Sokolov wrote poems oriented to female vocals. To perform vocal parts for the first songs, the authors invited Margarita Sukhankina. Having agreed, the singer took part in the recording of the compositions “Stars are Waiting for Us”, “Video” and “This Night”, however, she refused to participate in the recording of the rest of the material for the upcoming album, as she intended to have an opera career and did not want to be seen in the group performing the popular to the music. After a long search and trial by Andrei Lityagin, a new vocalist for Mirage, Natalia Gulkina, was found in the jazz studio of one of the Moscow culture palaces. Despite the great popularity and relevance, in 1988 Natalia Gulkina and Svetlana Razina left the group, creating their own projects - the Zvezda and Fairy groups, respectively. Soon, Natalya Vetlitskaya replaced them. She did not stay in the group for long - during 1988, after which she left her composition and took up a solo career. However, it was Vetlitskaya who starred in the first video of Mirage, in which she performed a medley of three songs - “I Don't Want”, “This Night” and “Music Tied Us Up”, which had not yet been published. An insignificant time in 1988 was also worked by Inna Smirnova, who later became the lead singer of the group “Fairy”. In the summer of 1988, on the equipment provided by the Sound studio, Mirage recorded the second magneto-album - Together Again. Margarita Sukhankina was again invited to record vocal parts; Andrey Lityagin (arrangements, keyboards), and Alexey Gorbashov (guitar) also participated in the recording. The appearance of the latter in the team had a significant impact on the further work of the Mirage: the combination of dance music with a rock guitar subsequently became the hallmark of the Mirage group. The year 1989 for the Mirage group was marked by active touring activities. At the concerts of the group, the young soloists Tatyana Ovsienko and Irina Saltykova performed with the voices of Gulkina and Sukhankina. The latter did not work in the group for long. With the departure of Saltykova, Ovsienko became not only the only leading soloist, but also the “face” of the Mirage group. In 1989, the group starred as a cameo in the Soviet musical comedy "Our Man in San Remo", where she performed the song "I Don't Ask Again", and also took part for the first time in the "Song of the Year" festival, performing with the songs "Music Connected Us "And" The New Hero. " The first composition was a great success and reached the final of the competition. Meanwhile, Lityagin and Gorbashov in the studio began work on the third album, "Not the First Time."