On 6 November 2023, Fightstar announced they would be returning for a one-off headline show at OVO Arena Wembley in March 2024 to mark the band's twenty year anniversary.

In 2003, when Charlie Simpson was still a member of the pop punk band Busted, he met fellow songwriter-guitarist Alex Westaway and drummer Omar Abidi at a party.

Simpson, Westaway and Abidi played a loop of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name", and agreed to attend a gig a few days later.

[3] Abidi was studying sound engineering at college, and guitarist Alex Westaway had recently moved to London after dropping out of university.

[6] Simpson told Busted's manager in December 2004 over the phone that he was leaving the pop trio to focus on Fightstar,[7] and wanted to do something his "heart was in".

[8] At a press conference at the Soho Hotel in London on 14 January 2005, Busted's record label announced that the band had split up after Simpson's departure several weeks earlier.

[5][9] After Simpson's decision to focus on Fightstar, the band entered Criterion Studios in London with producer Mark Williams to begin work on their first EP, They Liked You Better When You Were Dead.

[4] "Palahniuk's Laughter" received heavy rotation on music-video channels and spent many weeks on charts based on video and radio requests.

[20] Richardson, who had previously produced albums for Funeral for a Friend, Machine Head and Fear Factory, was meticulous during pre-production and took five days to tune the drums.

[29] According to Charlie Simpson, the band and Island had come to a "cross road" when the label began pushing Fightstar to create a more "mainstream" record.

[32] The song, inspired by a harrowing documentary about Chinese execution vans[33] and the end of Simpson's romantic relationship, produced a low-fi music video which cost £500 to make.

[40] On 11 August 2008 Fightstar released the B-sides album Alternate Endings, with live radio sessions, covers and a previously-unreleased track.

[41] When Gut Records went into administration at the end of 2008[42] the band decided to release their next album, Be Human, in a joint venture with their management company (Raw Power) on the Search and Destroy label.

[50] "Mercury Summer" was well-received, reaching the A List of the Radio 1 Playlist;[51] the band was featured on the BBC2 music show, Sound.

In December 2010 he released an EP entitled When We Were Lions through PledgeMusic, an organisation which helps artists raise money to record music from fans.

[63] Simpson's solo work differed from his previous efforts, featuring a sound described as closer to folk music than to rock or pop.

[65] In a December 2012 Digital Spy interview, Simpson confirmed his plan to finish writing (and record) the second solo album in February 2013.

[73] On 12 May 2015, Simpson posted on Instagram that Fightstar had returned to the studio to work on new material with producer Carl Bown and began using Twitter for updates on the progress of the album.

[74] On 22 July it was announced that the band would release Behind The Devil's Back on 16 October, with a string of UK dates promoting the album to follow.

[75] On 26 July the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show introduced "Animal", the band's first new song in five years[76] which was released digitally on iTunes on 7 August.

[11] Simpson echoed this, describing their musical aim as trying to "combine the light and dark shades, to make something utterly brutal and really heavy and on the other side have something really delicate and beautiful.

[93] Grand Unification and One Day Son, This Will All Be Yours' themes were apocalyptic,[94][95] and subsequent work varied from patriotism ("The English Way")[96] to self-loathing ("Damocles" and "Animal").

[97] Fightstar have been influenced by the works of author Chuck Palahniuk, as well as films and comics such as the Neon Genesis Evangelion series.

[98] According to Q magazine, "The intricate instrumental passages, multi-tracked vocal harmonies and pounding riffs hint at Muse-scale ambition and intellect".

emphasised this in her review: "Fightstar throw as many orchestral and choral flourishes at their muscular, solemnly heavy rock as it could take without drowning".

[87] Behind the Devil's Back (2015) was noted for a heavier use of electronics than in the past, said by some critics to be reminiscent of Westaway and Haigh's side project Gunship.

[103][104] The Edge and Rocksins.com reviewers remarked in particular the album's 1980s-style synths,[103][104] while NE:MM writer David Smith drew comparisons to American alternative rock supergroup Angels & Airwaves.

[105] Fightstar have said that they are influenced by a variety of music (particularly film scores),[4] citing Nirvana, Deftones, Radiohead, Silverchair, Pantera, Thrice, Mono, Explosions in the Sky, Elliott Smith, Funeral for a Friend, The Cure and Jeff Buckley as inspirations.