XTC

Swindon

XTC formed in Swindon in 1972 around two songwriters, Andy Partridge on vocals and guitar and Colin Moulding on vocals and bass. Both grew up on the town's Penhill council estate. At the end of 1972 Moulding and drummer Terry Chambers joined Partridge's band, which kept changing its name and line-up until it settled on XTC in 1975. Partridge took the name from Jimmy Durante's exclamation on finding the lost chord, "That's it! I'm in ecstasy!" Keyboardist Barry Andrews completed the line-up in December 1976. After John Peel saw them play and asked for a BBC session, several labels wanted to sign them, and they chose Virgin.

White Music came out in January 1978 and Go 2 followed that October. Andrews left in December 1978 during their first American tour, and Dave Gregory was brought in as a second guitarist. With Steve Lillywhite producing, Drums and Wires arrived in August 1979. Its lead single, Moulding's Making Plans for Nigel, reached number 17 in Britain, and the band's tours sold out afterwards. Black Sea (1980) peaked at 16 in the UK.

The studio band

English Settlement, a double album released in February 1982, reached number 5 in the UK, the highest placing of any XTC album, and its lead single Senses Working Overtime reached number 10. Partridge had written the album hoping that a record less suited to the stage would ease the pressure to tour. The band stopped touring in 1982 and became a studio project centred on Partridge, Moulding and Gregory. Chambers left in 1983, and XTC used session drummers from then on.

In April 1985 they released 25 O'Clock as the Dukes of Stratosphear, a mini-album of 1960s-style psychedelia presented as a long-lost group's work. In England it outsold The Big Express even before the Dukes were revealed to be XTC.

Skylarking

In early 1986 Virgin threatened to drop the band unless the next record sold more than 70,000 copies, and made them choose from a list of American producers. They picked Todd Rundgren. The sessions in Woodstock and San Francisco were tense. Partridge compared the power struggle to two Hitlers in the same bunker, yet the result, Skylarking, drew some of the best reviews of their career. Its B-side Dear God was left off the first pressings, then became an American college radio hit, and Geffen re-pressed the album with it. Skylarking peaked at number 70 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 250,000 copies.

Strike and return

Oranges & Lemons (1989) was made in Los Angeles, and its single Mayor of Simpleton was their best-performing American single. Nonsuch followed in April 1992 and was nominated for a Grammy. In 1993 the band went on strike against Virgin, citing an unfair contract, and eventually left the label. Apple Venus Volume 1 appeared in February 1999 on their own Idea Records, with a 40-piece orchestra recorded in a single session at Abbey Road. Gregory quit during the sessions. Its rock companion, Wasp Star, came out in 2000.

After XTC

In 2006 Partridge said the partnership with Moulding had come apart, leaving XTC "in the past tense", and in July 2008 he wrote that he believed their musical partnership had come to an end. The group never formally broke up. Steven Wilson mixed deluxe reissues of several of the albums. Moulding and Chambers released an EP as TC&I in 2017, the year the documentary XTC: This Is Pop aired on Sky Arts.

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine argued that the band make a convincing case to be called "the great lost pop band". They are credited as an influence on Britpop and on later power pop acts such as Jellyfish and the Apples in Stereo.