The label gained prominence in the 1980s for releasing albums from alternative rock, post-punk, gothic rock, and dream pop artists, such as Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, Modern English, Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, Pixies, Throwing Muses, and Watts-Russell's own musical project This Mortal Coil.

In 1987, the label scored an international hit with the dance music single "Pump Up the Volume" by the one-off project M|A|R|R|S.

4AD continued to have success in the 1990s and 2000s, with releases from The Breeders, Lush, Belly, Red House Painters, Camera Obscura, TV on the Radio, St. Vincent, and Bon Iver.

As of January 2022[update], the label's current roster includes acts such as Dry Cleaning, The National, Daughter, Deerhunter, Big Thief, Aldous Harding, U.S.

The only band to follow this path would be Bauhaus, who were signed to Beggars Banquet in late 1980, before Watts-Russell and Kent purchased the label outright.

Watts-Russell invited the graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and the photographer Nigel Grierson to create sleeve art for the label, and as a result, 4AD acquired a visually distinctive identity.

Its artists, such as Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, developed cult followings in the mid-1980s,[6] but 4AD continued to evolve, and, after signing Throwing Muses and Pixies, the label increasingly concentrated on underground American rock music.

In the 1990s, 4AD established an office in Los Angeles and had success with bands such as The Breeders, Belly, Red House Painters, Unrest and His Name Is Alive, as well as solo material by Frank Black and Kristin Hersh.

New signings that year included American underground acts Kendra Smith, Tarnation, Air Miami and The Amps.

The following year Watts-Russell started a sub-label, Guernica, which would release records by Unrest, That Dog, and Bettie Serveert.

[10] In 1999, Watts-Russell sold his share in 4AD back to the Beggars Group (as it had by then become), but the label continued to release music and add new artists to its roster.

The following year, 4AD saw the release of The National's High Violet and acclaimed albums from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Blonde Redhead and Deerhunter.

In 2013, the music historian Martin Aston wrote in Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD:[17] The attention to cataloguing aided the collectability of 4AD (the prefixes extended to DAD, GAD and HAD).

It created an identifiable culture that had grown big enough to support its own distribution system and trade magazine.For the most part, 4AD's official UK releases follow a standard scheme for designating catalogue numbers.

Following on from the Deerhunter session at the Studio Plateaux on Platts Eyott island in 2008, the recordings see 4AD artists performing back-catalogue covers and alternative versions of their own material.