  Until the early 2000s, the research portfolio of the Astronomical Institute
in Utrecht (SIU) did not include galaxy evolution. Somewhat serendipitously,
this changed with the advent of the star cluster group. In only a few years, a
simple framework was developed to describe and quantify the properties of
dynamically evolving star cluster populations. Since then, the `Utrecht cluster
disruption model' has shown that the galactic environment plays an important
role in setting the evolution of stellar clusters. From this simple result, it
follows that cluster populations bear some imprint of the characteristics and
histories of their host galaxies, and that star clusters can be used to trace
galaxy evolution -- an aim for which the Utrecht star cluster models were never
designed, but which they are well-capable of fulfilling. I review some of the
work in this direction, with a strong emphasis on the contributions from the
SIU.
