Before there was Gaga or Taylor, before pussy hats or Beyoncé's "girls in formation," there was an epic all-female music festival created by women fed up with sexism in the music industry: Lilith Fair. This summer, in honor of the festival's twentieth anniversary, we're exploring the history and legacy of the festival, and why the fight for equality in the industry continues today. Read the oral history of Lilith—as told by the women who lived it—and more here.

At 19 years old, in 1999, Canadian duo Tegan and Sara got what seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime: performing at Lilith Fair. “Being asked to play was like, We’ve made it,” Tegan Quin tells us. The indie-pop sisters were just beginning their careers, and the prospect of playing a music festival alongside acts like Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow was incredible. “A lot of these huge touring rock festivals just had no women, or hardly any women, and you look at this lineup of Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan, Indigo Girls, and Dixie Chicks combining to have a festival, and that seems ideal to me,” Tegan explains. Since then, Tegan and Sara have released eight studio albums, played countless festivals — including Lilith's revival in 2010 — and become advocates for LGBTQ and women’s rights.

And while they credit the festival for making strides for female musicians, they also acknowledge its shortcomings. "In a perfect world, all festivals would represent across-the-board diversity: women, people of color, and LGBTQ people,” Tegan notes. “There's a part of me that doesn’t want to have to be isolated in subgroups based on my sexuality or my gender," Sara adds. "But then on the other hand, I think maybe there's space for all of those things."

So with the tenth anniversary of Tegan and Sara's seminal album The Con and the twentieth anniversary of Lilith Fair approaching, we caught up with the two to talk about intersectionality, the “testosterone-fueled cock-fest” of the aughts, and whether Lilith Fair’s brand of feminism remains today.

GLAMOUR: What do you remember about your first show at Lilith Fair '98?

Tegan: It was very close to when we graduated high school, so it was a very strange sensation. Being asked to play Lilith Fair was like, We've made it. It did not register or matter we were playing a village stage that actually had nothing to do with Lilith Fair. It wasn't like Sarah McLachlan chose us — it likely would have been the local promoter booking that stage — but it didn't matter. We were so excited anyway. Even then, we were aware of how powerful it was to have so many women on the same bill.

GLAMOUR: What did you know about Lilith Fair from the get-go? What kind of impressions did you have when they first approached you?

Sara: We were in high school [when Lilith Fair started], and I remember hearing about it and thinking it was great and a really cool idea — but we were also in a totally different genre of music because we were in a punk band. I remember thinking it was something my mom and her friends were really excited about. And just to give context: When I was in high school, my mom was the same age basically I am now — her late thirties. So I remember it being, you know, Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks; these were artists that I was totally aware of, but I was a punk teenager taking drugs and going to raves. I was not necessarily listening to that music.