The story begins in 1978 with a band called The Young Savages. After a few months of strenuous practice they managed to play one gig, then threw out the original singer, Stewart Corbett. The then drummer, Mark Ivey, took over as singer and they recruited a school friend, Simon Smith, to play drums. They then changed their name to The Virgins and in this new format started to get quite a few shows at the inner-city venues of Melbourne, playing alongside the other contemporary post-punk bands of the day. While the band never released an album, they played a standard mix of late 70's punk covers along with original songs including 'Up the Duff', 'When you're a Wog', 'Parasite', 'You Endanger Us', 'Peter', 'Trash' and 'Punk Chicks'. 

Geoff Martyr (AKA Geoff Sick) became the band's manager in 1979 after seeing them play at the Champion Hotel with friend Dugald McKenzie. However, the reckless and aggressive behaviour of The Virgins was far more extreme than anything Melbourne had experienced for a while and the band rapidly acquired a bad reputation for being destructive at both gigs and parties.  Venue owners and bookers basically gave The Virgins the ultimatum of toning it down or having nowhere to work, which they refused to do, and so were banned from almost every venue in town. Now only playing once every three months, the band split up in 1980, but did a reunion gig in 1984. 

Simon Smith went off to join A.E.I.O.U, Steve Fusezi joined Little Murders and Mike Chrystal had a temporary reprieve from band life. In March of 1980 Mark Ivey and the band's manager Geoff Martyr were unfortunately both in a very bad car accident with several members of the band Z-Cars. After a fairly long recovery period Mark, Geoff, Mike and drummer Rick Ferrara formed the White Elephants in 1982 and were able to start gigging around town on a regular basis again. Geoff Martry was also a member of Melbourne hardcore punk bands Melbourne SS, Sick Things, Spew Forth and Criminal Youth.

The Virgins line-up included: Mark Ivey - Vocals, Mike Chrystal - Guitar, Simon Smith - Drums, Steve Fusezi - Bass.