There has been some amount of collaboration between Korpiklaani and Finntroll, as Samu Ruotsalainen of Finntroll provided session drums for their album 'Spirit of the Forest' and Järvelä provided the yoiking for the title track of Finntroll's album 'Jaktens Tid'.

From 1993-2003 the band was known as Shaman which was notable for the heavy use of original native Sámic music elements and lyrics in Sámi. The most widely used elements were the shamanic drum, yoik and humppa. Besides yoik, the vocals varied from clean to rather aggressive growling. Upon changing the name to Korpiklaani the music style shifted to more conventional folk metal with folk/thrash vocals instead of yoiking. The last album of Shaman Shamániac (2002) already featured much of the future Korpiklaani style. In fact, the song, "Vuola lávlla," has the same music as the Korpiklaani song, "Beer Beer."

Korpiklaani means "Backwoods Clan" in Finnish and refers to the extensive forests in Finland.