While touring Canada, the Drivers had a support band called Fast Forward, whose line-up included guitarist Kevin MacMichael.

In 1985, MacMichael survived an accident when his tour bus drove off the side of a mountain, and he relocated to London, England to join forces with Van Eede.

Virgin flew the band to New York City for initial recordings of the album, then to Australia to shoot music videos.

Their most popular single was a multiformat success in the US, where it also reached number four on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, No.

Their choice for follow-up single in the US was their third UK release, "One for the Mockingbird", but the song was a relative commercial disappointment on both sides of the Atlantic, just cracking the Top 40 of the Hot 100 at No.

Despite an unflattering review by Rolling Stone magazine, Cutting Crew received a Grammy nomination as the Best New Artist of 1987.

[citation needed] Disputes with management led to a long recording hiatus, which stalled the band's career momentum.

Although a music video for the title track did air briefly in the UK and North America, The Scattering failed to chart.

Standout tracks are "Frigid as England" written by Jeff Lowe, the plaintive "Sweet Auburn" and the darkly comic, "Don't Let It Bring You Down".

After the break-up, MacMichael joined forces with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and played on his solo studio album Fate of Nations.

On 31 December 2002, MacMichael died of lung cancer[10][3] at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the age of 51.

The following year, Van Eede took the decision to re-release the album under the title Grinning Souls,[10][11] this time crediting the work to Cutting Crew.

The new band toured in Germany, Norway, the UK, Canada, Hungary, Switzerland and the USA with, amongst others, ABC, Berlin, Wang Chung, Supertramp, Level 42 and Midge Ure.

[17][18] The band line-up included guitarists Gareth Moulton and Joolz Dunkley, bassist Nick Kay, keyboardist Jono Harrison, drummer Martyn Barker and the Blackjack Horns.

[14] At the end of 2018, Cutting Crew had announced, through their social networks, they had plans to release a new album featuring "new songs and new versions of CC classics.

[20] Soon afterwards, the release date was announced on 27 March 2020 by Van Eede in a short video through the Cutting Crew official Facebook page.

[33] After Van Eede stated he had planned to do some concerts held in England in 2021 to support the album,[34][30] the band announced on 7 September 2020 they would be the opening act for Go West's upcoming tour to happen in 2021,[35] but, after the sanitary measures regarding COVID-19 pandemic still happening, the joint tour was postponed to the first half of the following year.