Having released his debut album in 1993, he received worldwide attention with White Ladder five years later, particularly for the hit single "Babylon".

[10] He lived in Altrincham before moving with his family at the age of nine to Solva, Pembrokeshire, Wales, where his parents took over a gift shop and started a clothing business.

[13] Simon Price wrote of Gray's debut single, "Birds Without Wings": "He sounded like an anguished, intense troubadour, potentially a male PJ Harvey.

[16] While his first three albums featured acoustic folk songs and guitar-based alternative rock, White Ladder introduced his now-trademark folktronic sound.

After its re-release, combined with the release and success of single "Babylon", it sold 100,000 copies in Ireland alone, making it number one for six weeks,[17] and according to a 2012 report was the biggest-selling album ever in that country.

After a three-year hiatus which saw him wind down his recording and touring schedule due to exhaustion, Gray returned with his seventh album, Life in Slow Motion, in September 2005.

After the much-criticised A New Day at Midnight, Life in Slow Motion was hailed as a return to form by many critics.

Following the relative commercial failure of follow-up singles "Hospital Food" and "Alibi", Gray again went into hiatus during 2006.

On 7 July 2007, Gray performed with Damien Rice at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium in London.

The album's first single, "Fugitive", was released on 7 September 2009, coinciding with the start of an expansive world tour.

On 19 September, Gray performed his self-proclaimed first pool-side concert at the Rooftop Pool at The Colonnade Hotel in Boston for the Mix 104.1 End of Summer Bash.

In an interview for Hot Press, released on 3 December 2009, Gray revealed to Jackie Hayden that he was working on his next album, Foundling.

David Gray signed a global agreement with Kobalt Label Services for the release of his 10th studio album, Mutineers.

He embarked on an international tour to celebrate the anniversary, starting in Europe in February, but it was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[32][33] Gray's early music was in a contemporary folk-rock, singer-songwriter mode; his primary instrument was acoustic guitar, with occasional piano.

Starting with the release of White Ladder, Gray began to make significant use of computer-generated music to accompany his voice and acoustic instrumentation.

A New Day at Midnight continued this direction, although lyrically it was darker in tone than White Ladder and the instrumentation much more downbeat.

Gray is noted for his 'bobble-headed' style of performing, often rocking his head in time vigorously to the music.

Gray himself would comically play up this trait in the video for "Be Mine", in which his head eventually rolls off his body and gets thrown around in a variety of different locations.

Prior to his breakthrough album White Ladder in 1998, Gray had been the supporting act for the likes of Kirsty MacColl, The Corrs, Dave Matthews Band and Radiohead.

Gray married his wife Olivia in Los Angeles, California in 1993,[50] and together they have two daughters:[51] Ivy and Florence.

[57] In 2022, Gray contributed a new song, "The Arc", to the album Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds, released in partnership with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and musician and producer Merlyn Driver.