gouryella is a pretty bad example for trance really, hardly defining anything at all. for the simple reason that it's written in a major key, making it sound overly happy (evil minds might say cheesy), while the vast majoriy of trance tunes is in a minor key, giving it the typical mellow sound necessary for trance.
there's also a reason why "old" trance sounds different than the stuff we have today. synth technology wasn't as advanced as it is today, so the synth sounds defining uplift today just weren't easily possible back in the day. either you had a sample like this or you didn't, and many producers didn't. so it was much more common to work with piano sounds or violin strings etc, things like that. that's what most old trance tunes were made of.
the intentions and underlying musical concepts were the same though, just the methods were different. the differentiation of "uplift" (yeah it is a sucky name) sure wasn't around back in the day, but gouryella sure didn't define it. but there was plenty of stuff around that you would call uplift today, even back in the day.
it's the same thing with goa and psytrance really. for many people it means the same, even though there is a difference. today it's almost exclusively psytrance you hear everywhere, while back in the day it was all goa, because they just couldn't produce the sounds defining psy today. (at least to my knowledge, i'm not much involved in the psy scene, i'm mostly judging from various sets and tracks i've heard and i know. so i might be wrong.)
now what people think of when they hear "trance" depends on your locality, the community you're moving in, the people you talk to etc. in my area (or more precisely pretty much all over austria), many people think of "trance" in terms of psytrance/goa only, because the psy scene is alive and well, while the "regular" trance scene is non existant. in the certain online communities (AH, certain other forums dealing with asot, gdjb etc), "trance" is pretty much synonymous with uplift, possibly/partly including prog trance.