Mads Eriksen has been a full-time musician since 1988. After paying his dues in local cover bands, he formed the group Sharks&Whales who released the album Reaped by Man in 1988. After that he has embarked on a solocareer as a guitarist/composer, and has to date released seven self-titled albums.

His debutalbum Journey was released in February 1990. The album was very well accepted by both the public and the critics, and Eriksen got a very favourably review by talent scout/producer Mike Varney in the january 1990 edition of Guitar Player. He also recieved a scholarship from Norways biggest newspaper, VG. In 1991 came the second album Storyteller, which became Eriksen’s first international release. The German company MGI released the record in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and Austria. In June 1992 the record was selected as "Album Of The Month" in "Guitar For The Practising Musician" (Later "Guitar Magazine"), at the time the biggest guitarmagazine in America. In the German Metal Hammer it received five stars out of six.

In 1993 Mads Eriksen was inducted in the official celebration of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s 150th birthday. He played several concerts during the Bergen Music Festival that year, and released the album Intermission Troldhaugen that contained works by Grieg arranged for electric guitar and rockband instrumentation. In 1994 he was soloist on electric guitar with the prestigious Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra where he played music by Grieg along with his own music. In 1994 came his fourth album, M.E. – generally accepted as Eriksen most versatile album so far – which was selected as one of the top five guitar albums that year by Guitar Shop editor Pete Prown, who concluded that is was "the best-sounding crunch of the year".

In the fall of 1994, Eriksen was approached by the Norwegian foreign office and asked to participate in an export campaign for Norwegian culture. This led to concerts with Mads Eriksen and his band in New York City and Los Angeles in June 1995. He also performed at the NAMM show in Los Angeles in 1996 and 1999, representing Eugen Guitars and Seymor Duncan pickups, respectively.

Two further releases, The Plough Boy (1996) and Suburban Cowboy (1997) marked a direction shift in Eriksen’s music. Suburban Cowboy was released in the U.S. in 1999 on the label Holographic Records and recieved rave reviews from American guitar- and progressive music magazines.

The last few years have seen Eriksen touring with his band in France, Scotland and Lithuania, where he has performed on several occasions with The Kaunass Symphony Orchestra and opened the Kaunas Jazz Festival in 1999. He has held two masterclasses at the Napier University in Edinburgh in 1998 and 1999.

In January 2000 Mads started a cooperation with the renowned Norwegian blues artist John Magnar "Hungry John" Bernes. They have done a lot of concerts together since then, where the audience is treated to a mixture of Mads' instrumentals, Hungry John's bluesy numbers and a couple of blues and rock classics. They will perform together on several occasions during the summer of 2001, and will be touring in Norway in the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2002. The project is called Mad&Hungry.

Mads Eriksen has just released his seventh album Redhanded. This is his first record that is not entirely instrumental. Chris Thompson, former Manfred Manns’s Earth Band and Alan Parsons Project singer, has co-written and sings on four tracks. The recordings with Thompson were done in Fountain Walley, CA, in january 2001. They performed together on Bergen Music Fest (the Ole Blues – festival) on April 27 2001 in front of an ecstatic crowd of 800 where songs from "Redhanded" and from Chris Thompsons upcoming soloalbum were performed along with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band classics and You’re the voice, a huge hit by John Farnham but penned by Chris Thompson. On April 30 they played at Smuget in Oslo.

The cooperation was regarded succesful by all parties and has become permanent, and Chris Thompson and Mads Eriksen Band has played several tours and festivals the last two years. In March 2003 they went to New Zealand, Chris Thompson's homecountry, and started on a complete new album project. The CD will be finished in November 2003 and be out early 2004 as an Chris Thompson/ Mads Eriksen album. It will contain contain complete new material, but also a version of Chris Thompson's smash hit You're The Voice.The Norwegian TV channel NRK have recorded one of their concerts from Tromsø, Norway, in November 2002, which is soon to be broadcasted on NRK TV and will be released on DVD/CD this fall, followed by extensive touring in Germany, Austria and Norway in September.

Mads also gigs frequently with his own trio and with blues singer John Magnar "Hungry John" Bernes and the band Mad&Hungry on clubs and festivals all over Norway. He did his first-ever solo acoustic concert in March 2003, and his next solo recording is likely to be an all-acoustic one.

In 2002 he was awarded the prestigious Norwegian State Scholarship (Statens Kunstnerstipend)