TIESTO! began DJing professionally at school parties, and then moved on to become a resident DJ between 1985 and 1993 at several clubs in The Netherlands. During these years, TIESTO! produced hardcore/gabber tracks under the aliases Da Joker and DJ Limited. However, it was at the Spock[2], a small club in Breda, where TIESTO! was able to finetune his own style by playing in a separate room from 10 pm until 4 am on weekends. In the mid 1990s, TIESTO! started to produce trance, and in 1997 he and Arny Bink co-founded Black Hole Recordings to support his work. A series of singles were released under various aliases, such as Allure, Drumfire, Hammock Brothers, Paradise in Dubs, Passenger, Roze, Stray Dog, Tom Ace, and Wild Bunch.

TIESTO's! fame started to skyrocket in the late 1990s by playing at the first ID&T Innercity party, and in the early 2000s for his six-hour "TIESTO! Solo" sets which TIESTO! performed without other DJs or opening acts. This idea, of one DJ playing alone to a large crowd, was brought to its pinnacle when TIESTO! was the first DJ to hold a solo concert in a stadium. On May 10, 2003, he performed for over 25,000 people in Arnhem's Gelredome. Dubbed "TIESTO! in Concert", the event was an enormous success for Verwest. TIESTO! repeated this type of concert in the next year during two consecutive nights in late October. In addition to holding these two concerts for 35,000 of his fans, he held another for 20,000 in Hasselt, Belgium the week afterwards. DVDs of both his May 10 2003 and October 30, 2004 concerts have been released.

In 2007 TIESTO! will return to the large scale gigs, announcing the Elements of Life tour. Several dates have been confirmed so far. One in the Kings Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom on 31 March and the other in the Ethias Arena in Hasselt, Belgium on 19 May. On May 31, June 1 and 2 2007 he will perform another three live shows at Gelredome in three consecutive nights.

As of April 6 2007 TIESTO! will start presenting a new weekly 2 hour radio show called "Club Nouveau" on Dutch radio station Radio 538 (stream @ www.radio538.nl). The show will be broadcasted on Friday night between 22.00 and midnight (GMT+1) and will supposedly also be available worldwide as a 2 hour podcast.(RECOMMENDED!)

TIESTO's! motto is: "I feel the energy from the crowd and I try to give it back."