The January 1989 release Church Chat Volume 4 featured a history of the group.

Many people have been asking me what PTL really stands for and about the history of PTL... PTL has no special meaning whatsoever, since it is not an acronym. It is a parody off of the REAL PTL Club¹...

PTL started out with 5 members.. The members were: Me, Bad Brains, Death Star, The Hermit and Rambo. The Hermit and Rambo dropped out when PTL first started getting going. Mr. Transistor joined us and his first crack was Marble Madness which many people seemed to think was almost impossible to crack at the time. Death Star seemed to fade away after my last major board crash before summer or during summer. I'm not really sure exactly when since my 286 is a piece of shit and is always having Hard Drive crashes or system problems... Oh yes I almost forgot.. Somewhere along the lines, we merged with CPI (Canadian Pirates Inc.) I believe was their acronym at first.. And then they changed to KGB .. KGB released a few cracks under PTL but seemed to fade away... They cracked that I can think of [BoulderDash Construction Kit, Ultima I, and Might & Magic]. There are more I am sure but I can not think of them right now. Sometime after Death Star was lost, Specular Vision joined PTL.. He has cracked a couple things that I can think of [BattleHawks 1942, The Train, and Space Station Oblivion].. He has probably done more but I do not have the titles handy. Now, last but not least... We have just gotten Jenetic Bytemare who's cracks that I know of are listed at the beginning of this file.

Church Chat Volume 4 further explained that "Jenetic Bytemare has joined PTL", and went on to list The Spiker, Dessert Foxx, Specular Vision, The Grand Elusion, Bad Brains and Jenetic Bytemare as members at that time.