[2] Pendulum originally formed in the city of Perth, Western Australia, by Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen and Paul "El Hornet" Harding.

The group is notable for its distinctive sound, mixing electronic music with hard rock and covering a wide range of genres.

[4] Despite this, on 20 March 2016, Pendulum reunited to perform at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida, marking their official return as a live act.

[7] One evening they were meant to play a DJ set on The Perth Producers night at The Drumclub, but Swire's hard drive failed.

Once fellow drum & bass artist DJ Fresh offered them free accommodation in his London flat for eight months, they decided to move to England.

[10] The band also recorded and released 'Spiral / Ulterior Motive' the same year,[11] and in 2004 made their first compilation appearance on 'Jungle Sound: The Bassline Strikes Back!

[14] Following the success of their 2005 debut album, their label Breakbeat Kaos re-issued the compilation under the name Jungle Sound Gold, the front now saying "mixed by Pendulum".

[15] In 2006, the trio became a sextet after introducing Ben Mount as their MC, Peredur ap Gwynedd as their guitarist, and Paul Kodish as their drummer.

[31] On 21 May 2010, the band headlined the annual Radio 1's Big Weekend festival which was held at the Vaynol Estate, Bangor, Gwynedd.

In January 2011, Pendulum released a Deluxe Edition of Immersion via iTunes which contained the album's original 15 tracks and a collection of remixes of "Watercolour", "Witchcraft" and "The Island" by other artists including deadmau5, Tiësto and Chuckie.

[44] Six months later on 16 June 2012, Rob Swire re-iterated that there would be no further Pendulum live shows and also withdrew his plans of releasing a new record in 2013, as Knife Party had become his primary project.

[45] El Hornet & MC Verse, meanwhile, continued to perform DJ sets across the world using the alias, while the remaining members of the band began to partake in various side projects.

In 2011 Rob Swire and fellow member Gareth McGrillen announced in various interviews that a project called Knife Party had been created.

The side project is virtually unlinked by any means to Pendulum and consists of electro house, dubstep and other club genres.

Rob Swire also stated that he personally didn't want to make a new Pendulum album but rather work on something else with Knife Party or create a new project altogether, one he can have "control" of, since he "lost heart for the project", having no real desire to make drum & bass anymore and fusing it with rock, while again ruling out a live band tour and gave no further details on release dates.

[53][54] On 22 August 2015, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen joined El Hornet and Ben Verse onstage at V Festival in Hylands Park, Essex for the Pendulum DJ set.

[64] On 29 January 2019, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen stated that they had "potential new Pendulum stuff" that they would be working on following the release of their Knife Party EP Lost Souls.

[65] In March 2019, Pendulum announced their headline appearance at the upcoming Southwest Four Festival, which had Swire, McGrillen, & El Hornet play a DJ set in front of a Mayan temple like structure.

An accompanying music video for "Nothing for Free" was released 18 September, which features a population of rabbits dealing with an outbreak of myxomatosis, which serves as a commentary on the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

[67] On 14 September 2020,[68] the band recorded a concert at Spitbank Fort to promote their new music which was streamed live on YouTube on 2 October 2020.

[69] On 16 April 2021, Pendulum released "Come Alive" accompanied by a video featuring footage from their London SW4 Trinity show in 2019, and announced a live headline festival appearance at Drumsheds on 13 August 2021[70] with the promise of more new material and dates to follow, possibly signalling the re-launch of the comeback tour, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 20 May 2021, the new EP Elemental was announced for release on 17 June 2021, also containing a song featuring Hybrid Minds titled "Louder Than Words".

[71] The day after the release of the EP, a live action-animated hybrid music video for "Louder Than Words" was released, featuring Bob and Gary, a cartoon cat and mouse duo heavily inspired by Tom and Jerry, going through a depressing break-up where Gary becomes famous as a result of the show while Bob fell into obscurity.

On June 2, 2023, Pendulum released a new song titled "Halo", which features Welsh metalcore singer and Bullet for My Valentine frontman Matthew Tuck on unclean vocals.

[74] In October 2023, Pendulum performed a cover of "Anti-Hero" by Taylor Swift on the Australian radio station Triple J as part of Like a Version.

[77] Pendulum's musical style consisted of a fusion of drum & bass (along with other electronic genres), alternative rock and heavy metal, with the inclusion of acoustic instruments.

This creates a sound reminiscent of electronic rock, albeit with much more prominent drum & bass and, more recently, dubstep influences.

Bassist Gareth McGrillen stated in an interview on Channel 4 that they use 13 computers during the live performances, all of which are mixing the sounds produced by the instruments in real time.

[80] This issue has since been resolved; DJ Fresh is included on the list of acknowledgements in the Immersion booklet, and Pendulum has since worked with Breakbeat Kaos again, on the vinyl release of the singles "Witchcraft" and "The Island".

[82] For the band's part, in an interview with The Times, Swire cited "Goldie making concept albums about space and his mum"[83] (in the words of The Times reporter) as one of the reasons why he was not initially keen on the genre; he claims to have been more into "breakbeat, straight up house and hardcore" before Gareth McGrillen, who is Pendulum's bassist and was Swire's bandmate in Xygen, introduced him to "more electronic" areas of the genre.