What got you into ambient?

In order:

1. Like the above poster, video games. Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda in particular were big interests when I was younger (FFVII, FFVIII, Chrono Cross), as well as Stewart Copeland's first Spyro the Dragon soundtrack, though the latter was a bit more subconscious and I didn't realize how it affected my playing the game until I decided to sit down and play through it again years later while feeling nostalgic.

2. Classical music: John Williams (Jurassic Park, ET), Beethoven, Bach, as well as subtle uses of piano and strings in rock and pop songs that I liked when younger; it all seemed very fluid, airy, and kind of "floaty," if you know what I mean. Film scores took it a step further, because they used those effects to accentuate the mood or the action of scenes in films, which provided the "visual" link in my mind necessary to become interested in ambient music.

3. Radiohead, first with songs like Fitter Happier and Fake Plastic Trees (the subtle but very ambient background keyboards), then later when I was completely surprised by Kid A and Amnesiac (Like Spinning Plates, Kid A's title track, Treefingers, the "hidden track" in Motion Picture Soundtrack).

4. Radiohead led to a bunch of indie music, which I found boring, for the most part. Eventually, once I got past all the pretentious stuff, I started getting more heavily into classical and then decided to look up "ambient," though I thought of that term as more of a descriptor like "loud" or "fast" than an actual genre name. I immediately discovered Brian Eno this way, and was recommended vidnaObmana and Stars of the Lid shortly thereafter.

5. That was about six years ago. Since then, everything from Carbon Based Lifeforms to Boards of Canada to more obviously ambient stuff like Robert Rich has become of interest, and I have no problem mixing different kinds of electronic music, so long as it's appropriately atmospheric and full of feeling. I still find new game soundtracks to listen to as well; in fact, I kind of think that more downtempo and ambient fans (especially downtempo fans) should check out game music.

Computer game soundtracks like Fallout/Quake1 had a big impression on me, and after i stumbled upon Robert Rich, Lustmord and Steve Roach in my search for similar music, there was no turning back :]

In the late seventies I was really in to Bowie and was always intrigued by the instrumental ambient sounds on the b sides of HEROES and LOW this made me search out more Eno and I discovered MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS and THE PLATEAUX OF MIRROR which blew me away and from there it just grew and grew, also in 1979 Steve Hillage did an album called RAINBOW DOME MUSICK which increased my interest. The 1980's found me getting in to Cocteau Twins and more Harold Budd and Eno again. The 1990's came and I was totally in to the sounds of Orbital, some of the Orb's stuff, Aphex Twin, Autechre but I still returned to classic Eno like THURSDAY AFTERNOON and the Cocteau Twins / Harold Budd colaboration THE MOON AND THE MELODIES.
Now my tastes are still mainly Ambient I still listen to Eno, Budd and other pioneers of the sound but I'm also in to new stuff like Celer, Ian Hawgood, Bvdub, Stars Of The Lid and Jason Corder.
So really it's thanks to Bowie for inviting Eno to work with him.

Deep thinking

In 2007 at 18 years old, I was happening to play Halo 3 when one of the game's main menu songs caught my interest: "Never Forget" by Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori. Its peaceful, soothing quality greatly appealed to me, and became my definite precursor to falling in love with ambient music later on. At 19, while happening to browse through some of Enya's music, her song "Boadicea" was a calm to my consciousness and re-awakened my dormant fascination of such aural serenity. Finally, at age 20, I discovered Last.fm, and having kept in mind my interest in this (relaxing) type of music, I already somehow intuitively "knew" of there being a genre called "Ambient" as my mind had associated it with the word "atmospheric". So I looked it up in search and sure enough - there was this so-called genre. From that point is when I ultimately, vigorously dug for ambient to my liking, until I'd say I finally hit some of the gold with discovering two basic ambient artists - Stars of the Lid and Tim Hecker. Since then, a handful of artists associated with the genre have grown on me, most notably Hammock and Hecq.

atrium carceri was my first experience.i liked his atmospheric,creepy sound.then i discovered for myself ulver.now ambient is one of my favourites genres :3