Boden holds a master's degree in Composition for Theatre[5] and has worked on theatrical productions, including two plays with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In 2012 he was commissioned to create a stage show based on The Ballad Of Little Musgrave And Lady Barnard as part of the Benjamin Britten centenary celebrations.

They toured that year and collaborators from The Works joined them on stage, with a finale at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire featuring many guests.

He was the first person to use a "stomp box" with English traditional music[citation needed] - an idea he and Spiers borrowed from singer-songwriter Rory McLeod.

The folk big band was conceived by Spiers & Boden whilst stuck in traffic en route to playing a gig in Essex as a way to take the duo's show to the bigger stages and festivals.

Adding sousaphone player Gideon Juckes to the lineup in 2005, the band then signed to German label Westpark Music and recorded their debut full-length album Burlesque.

Following Boden's decision to leave the band to pursue other interests, Bellowhead disbanded in May 2016, but reformed in 2020 during the pandemic for a one off livestream, and again in 2022 for a UK 10th anniversary tour of their album Broadside.

As Boden explained in a BBC Radio 3 essay,[7] he views the prospect of a post-industrial world without gas or oil as sitting in harmony with the relevance of folk music and social singing.

[8] In 2016, following the end of Bellowhead, Boden re-released his first album Painted Lady with three newly recorded tracks, and toured entirely solo for the first time.

In 2019 Boden released Rose In June, a selection of traditional and composed tracks performed by the 10 piece Remnant Kings.

Most were also performed solo, although he had occasional guest singers, notably Fay Hield and several extra voices on some of the carols that were the focus for December, based on the Sheffield tradition at Dungworth.

The resulting piece used Britten's setting of the ballad for male voice choir, interspersed with five ‘interpolations’ composed by Boden, with lyrics co-written by him and Mary Hampton.

The soloists were Mary Hampton, Tim van Eyken, Rob Harbron, James Findlay and The Peterborough Male Voice Choir.

The production was directed by David Edwards and was staged at Snape Maltings Aldeburgh, Peterborough Cathedral and The Sage, Gateshead.

[10] In film and television, Boden has written the soundtrack for the BBC TV version of the radio comedy Count Arthur Strong.

Boden also contributed a version of Mike Scott's How Long Will I Love You to the soundtrack of the Richard Curtis’ feature film About Time, appearing as a busker in an extended montage sequence.