Skid Row was touring with Guns N' Roses in 1991 when their second album, "Slave to the Grind", debuted at number one on the pop charts. Never before had a metal album debuted at number one. In the years to follow, many other metal bands, including Metallica and Guns N' Roses, also had albums to start at number one, but Skid Row made the milestone in metal history.

The band name was bought for $35,000 from renowned blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore in 1987. Brendan "Brush" Shiels, frontman of the original Skid Row has said that he has always been unhappy at the group "stealing their name".

Sometime during the early 1990s, a fan threw a t-shirt onstage and lead singer Sebastian Bach put it on without first reading its anti-gay slogan "AIDS: Kills Fags Dead".
Bach later stated in an apology "My grandmother had recently died of cancer, I guess I would be pissed too if I saw someone wearing a "CANCER Kills Grandmothers Dead" shirt". After some more time passed, he apologized seriously for wearing the shirt and made a substantial donation to an AIDS charity.