Grandaddy was formed in 1992 by singer, guitarist and keyboardist Jason Lytle, bassist Kevin Garcia and drummer Aaron Burtch.

[4] Lytle has also cited new wave influences including A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), the Human League, Thomas Dolby, Depeche Mode and a-ha.

[6][7] The band members constructed a studio at the Lytle family home, and their first release, also in 1992, was the self-produced cassette Prepare to Bawl.

[9] Around the time that The Sophtware Slump was released, Grandaddy was invited to open for Elliott Smith on his tour for Figure 8.

[6] On some nights, Smith would join Grandaddy onstage and sing lead vocals on portions of "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot".

[18] On December 20, 2002, Grandaddy released The Ham and Its Lily under the alias Arm of Roger via their private label Sweat of the Alps.

[22] The title is a reference to Lytle's desire to leave Modesto, a town which he complained "sucks out people's souls".

[22] Lytle created the album over a year and a half in his home studio in Modesto, "fueled by alcohol, painkillers for his body aches and ... recreational drugs",[23] with only Burtch from the remainder of the band playing on it.

[23] At the same time as working on the album, Lytle created the EP Excerpts From the Diary of Todd Zilla, which was released first.

[22][24] In January 2006, after a meeting the previous month, Lytle announced that the band had decided to split up, citing the lack of financial income from being in the group.

"[26][27][28] Lytle regarded Just Like the Fambly Cat as a "pretty fitting" last stop for Grandaddy;[29] however, he continued to make music and perform solo,[30] and worked with M. Ward on Hold Time.

Jim Fairchild's first solo album, Ten Readings of a Warning, was released in April 2007 on Dangerbird Records, under the name All Smiles.

In 2010, he was selected to lead a project at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,[35] and in 2011 he released his third All Smiles album, Staylow and Mighty.

[38] In March 2012, it was announced that Grandaddy had reformed and were to play a limited number of shows, including London on September 4, and headlining the End of the Road Festival in the UK.

On August 7, 2012, to kick off their reunion tour, they played a "secret" show at the Partisan venue in Merced, California, but were billed as "The Arm of Roger".

Money was a motivating factor (resurfacing my indoor tennis court, oil change for my 4×4 Ferrari) but the idea of playing and hanging out with each other is something all of the guys are pretty stoked about.

[44] In September 2015 Lytle tweeted that the band was working on a "new GD LP", which was interpreted by the media as confirmation that a new Grandaddy album was being recorded.

[51][52] Two commemorative shows were planned in Modesto for October 2017 – the first was a scheduled date that had already sold out – but these were also canceled due to the band members' ongoing grief over Garcia's passing.

[54] To commemorate its 20th anniversary in October 2017, the album Under the Western Freeway was reissued as a double vinyl LP that included eight demo tracks.

[55] In November 2018 a song titled "Bison on the Plains" was released: Lytle revealed that it had been written prior to the completion of Last Place .

"[58] In April 2022, Lytle and a group of French musicians embarked on a short tour of Europe under the name "Grandaddy and the Lost Machine Orchestra," playing the entirety of The Sophtware Slump.

[59] On February 25, 2023, Lytle announced via Twitter in response to a fan that a new album had been recorded and would be released "in the middle of" that year.

On October 25, 2023, 'Watercooler', the lead single from their forthcoming album Blu Wav was released alongside a music video.

[67] Jon Pareles of The New York Times described the band's songs as "stately anthems orchestrated with full late-psychedelic pomp: fuzz-toned guitar strumming, rippling keyboards, brawny drumbeats".

Adrien Begrand, writing for PopMatters, described the lyrics on The Sophtware Slump as "one's attempt to transcend the glut of technology in today's urban lifestyle, in search of something more real, more natural, more pastoral".

[64] Ben Sisario of The New York Times stated that the band "provided the soundtrack to dot-com-era alienation, singing in a cracked yet still innocent voice of life spent staring into a computer screen".

[67] Ross Raihala, reviewing Sumday for Spin, identified what he called Lytle's "geeky identification with technology".

[74] On The Sophtware Slump, CMJ writer Richard A. Martin commented on Lytle's "sympathy for the lost souls and machines of the high-tech dot-com landscape".

[73] Lytle said of the tracks on Excerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla: "For some reason, they are tied together by the idea of being fed up with your environment.

Everybody talks about this whole technology versus nature thing and if it's anything that is it: look who my best friends are, a bunch of plastic and circuitry and electricity, when I should be running around getting chased by bumblebees.