God I know far too much about this...3 of the 5 kids all used cloth nappies.
If you are buying brand new, try to get limited editions - they hold their value a lot longer. New mums look upon them like handbags...
In terms of liners, we used a fleece liner, most poo would simply flick off into the toilet with leaving very little residue on the liner itself - also the fleece is much kinder on baby skin. With the cloth nappies there are loads of types, some come with an integral waterproof layer, others have a plastic type wrap that fastens over the nappy. Cost wise and hassle wise, once you are in the flow of using them they are no different to disposable nappies. Key reason we did it was both the chemicals used in nappies and the environmental aspect. Cloth nappies rarely get thrown out, whereas you can go through 4/5 normal nappies a day if not more. In the 6 years we used them the "technology" moved on massively and we havent used them in the last 4 years, so no doubt they have continued to improve.