The band are known for the hit singles "Silent Running", "All I Need Is a Miracle", "Taken In", "The Living Years", "Word of Mouth", and "Over My Shoulder".

[1] In 2010, the band was revived with Rutherford headlining a completely new set of musicians, including vocalists Andrew Roachford and Tim Howar.

During hiatuses from Genesis, Mike Rutherford had been pursuing a solo career, releasing Smallcreep's Day in 1980 and Acting Very Strange in 1982.

Similarly to Steely Dan or The Alan Parsons Project, in the studio Mike and the Mechanics were not a tight-knit band but a vehicle for the songwriting of Rutherford, Robertson, and Neil, and session keyboardists, drummers, guitarists, and even lead vocalists often performed on the songs in place of the official band members.

[2] Rutherford was more than satisfied with the resulting album and decided to continue the band indefinitely, rather than leaving it as a one-off project.

While Rutherford's solo albums had been moderately successful, he had never managed a Top 40 hit (except in Canada, where "Maxine" from Acting Very Strange reached No.

39); Mike + the Mechanics scored three of them, including two US Top 10s, "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)", "All I Need is a Miracle" and an additional No.

[3] "Silent Running" was featured in the movie On Dangerous Ground, released in North American cinemas in 1986 as Choke Canyon.

The album also featured the song "Nobody's Perfect", sung by Young; it served as the background music to a television advertising campaign for Tennent's bitter.

At this point Carrack began to take a much larger role in the band, joining their stable of songwriters and adding keyboards.

[5] In 1995, the band began to fall apart: Adrian Lee and Peter Van Hooke left (before and after Beggar on a Beach of Gold, respectively), and Christopher Neil's long tenure as songwriter/producer for the group ended.

As implied by the new name, Carrack played a larger role than before, performing all the band's lead vocals and keyboards and co-writing all the songs.

It featured both Roachford and Tim Howar on vocals, Luke Juby on keyboards, Gary Wallis on drums, and Anthony Drennan on guitar and bass.

In a 1996 article for Q magazine, critic Peter Kane said that while the band 'fly in the face of fashion', their music has a 'basic decency' and 'unquestionably speaks to more people than many of us are sometimes prepared to accept'.