Do hard drives need a GUID partition table (GPT) to boot in UEFI mode?

(U)EFI-based systems, by specification, can only boot from GPT-style disks. The traditional BIOS can boot from MBR-style disks, and in some cases (depends on the manufacturer), they can also boot from GPT. However, as per the UEFI specification, the disk should have a GPT partition table.

This MSDN article describes it well:

Systems that support UEFI require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT.