[1] They started out influenced by American folk rock, with a set list dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane".

The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour.

[8] The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, mandolin, keys, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since.

They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" in Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – on the same street where Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up.

[11] The house lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums.

[12] After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him.

Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968.

The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period.

Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking.

They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now".

[18] In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three under pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.

Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on this integration, which would result in a new sound and style manifest on their fourth album Liege & Lief.

The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional.

The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album.

Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band.

Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period.

[24] The same year the band released a single, "Now Be Thankful", and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest, and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195.

[29] These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last; Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Country Band, and he was soon followed by Mattacks.

The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.

Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976.

[32] By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult.

They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived.

Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs.

Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the latter of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of Fairport.

The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival.

Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene.

Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).

Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.

As of 2020[update] the band continues to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go.