Stephen Layton established himself in the 1990s as one of the leading young British choral conductors.

As a boy he was a chorister in the Choir of Winchester Cathedral, which provided him his early musical training. He then won a post as a music scholar at Eton College. He learned singing, music theory, harmony, piano, and organ, in addition to his other course work.

He decided on music as a career and in competitive auditions won the position of organ scholar of Kings College, Cambridge, perhaps the most famous of the British university chapel choirs. In this capacity he received a full scholarship to Cambridge, where he studied music, in return for participating in the choirs musical activities. As such, he appeared on several recordings on the Decca and EMI labels, performed on the BBC, and made tours of Europe, the United States, and Japan.

His first major conducting appearance was at Cambridge, where he led the choir and an orchestra in Handels Messiah, with soprano Emma Kirkby as one of the soloists, and conducted a university performance of Glucks Orfée et Eurydice. Soon after graduation, he became the musical director of the Wokingham Choral Society, with which he has led performances of Elgars The Dream of Gerontius, Poulencs Gloria, and Tippetts A Child of Our Time.