Often associated with the C86 indie scene of the time, the band released several acclaimed albums of abrasive guitar pop and a dozen or so singles on a variety of labels.

Although Callahan originally favoured Skyscraper as a project name, the band ultimately settled on the name Moonshake (taken from a Can single on the seminal Krautrockers' Future Days album).

"[2][3] After the release of First, Moonshake signed to the emerging independent label Too Pure (home of PJ Harvey, Th' Faith Healers and Stereolab).

Their first single for the new label was "Secondhand Clothes", which showed a leaning towards the dub-bass-heavy post-punk sound of bands such as Public Image Limited and The Pop Group.

"[3] "Secondhand Clothes" was followed, in 1992, by the Beautiful Pigeon EP (which featured two rare songwriting collaborations between Callahan and Fiedler).

The band began to earn many positive reviews for its unusual sample-driven and rhythmically propulsive sound, which drew on indie rock, noise-rock, breakbeats, electronica, psychedelia, dub, art-rock, Krautrock and punk.

"[3] Callahan said that the band was "well prepared" for the recording sessions following extensive rehearsing (with co-producer/engineer Guy Fixsen already involved), but that they'd also embraced opportunities to improve the material further while in studio.

"[3] Variously described as "bursting with ideas and tension... a richly inventive, endlessly fascinating listen",[7] "big, weird and unnerving"[8] and "one hell of a ground-breaking record (which) stands resolutely alone among all of the albums released in 1992 as no other band has managed to create anything remotely similar before or since... a unique album with few equals", [2] Eva Luna ultimately satisfied both Fiedler and Callahan.

"[3] In between studio and writing sessions, the band spent 1992 touring Britain with The Wedding Present, Th' Faith Healers and PJ Harvey, as well as supporting Pulp in Paris.

"[5] Following this tour, Moonshake split in half, with Margaret Fiedler and John Frenett departing to form a new band, Laika, with Fixsen.

The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow was meant to be my kind of White Light/White Heat or Trout Mask Replica where it was not as hi-fi as the earlier stuff and a splurge of creativity.

Collapsed Lung's bass player Johnny Dawe covered for the departed Frenett, while horns were added by trumpeter Andrew Blick (Blowpipe) and saxophonist Raymond Dickaty (from Gallon Drunk and Skree).

[12][13] In addition, PJ Harvey, Stereolab keyboard player Katharine Gifford and Sidi Bou Said members Lee Howton and Claire Lemmon all contributed vocals, ensuring that Moonshake on record would retain a strong female component in spite of Fiedler's departure.

I had hundreds of sheets of paper over the wall with — because I can't read music — mixing and arranging diagrams of horns and samples and whose vocals went where...

It revealed that Moonshake had completely banned guitars from their new sound, relying entirely on the combination of Dickaty's saxophones with looped and layered samples over the rhythm section (in a similar manner to The Young Gods).

Callahan wrote all of the songs for the record, with his bleak, vivid urban vision now uninterrupted and untempered by Fiedler's more psychedelic approaches.

"[3] During the recording of The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, Dickaty had joined the band as a full-time member[13] and Matt Brewer was recruited as the new bass guitarist.

[17] The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow received good reviews which were not matched by sales, and some time after the release of the album Moonshake parted company with Too Pure.

This new line-up began recording what would turn out to be the band's final album, Dirty & Divine, in December 1995, completing it in February 1996.

Compared to The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, Dirty & Divine featured a far less prominent role for female vocals (reduced more to harmonies) and reduced instrumentation, being recorded by a core group of Callahan, Brewer, Rother and Dickaty (with vocal assistance from Katherine Gifford, Stereolab's Mary Hansen and Kate Blackshaw).

The album contained various songs which had been played in the Moonshake set during the previous two years, with subjects ranging from sailor's tales, the lives and deaths of cities, addictions to risk and danger and sexual fantasy in advertising.

With C/Z determined to promote the band in America, Moonshake joined the 1996 Lollapalooza tour of the American Midwest (headlined by Metallica and Wu-Tang Clan) from late June to early August.

"[13] While unimpressed by their treatment by the Lollapalooza organisation, the band maintained an affection for the United States and continued to tour there whenever possible, Callahan having already discovered that American audiences were "much more open-minded.

I think they'd had enough of grunge and all that kind of stuff... we were finding these audiences that had been into post-hardcore in the late '80s and were tired of mainstream rock and seemed to be waiting for bands like us to come along and go a bit more out there...

In 1997, shortly after the UK release of Dirty & Divine, Callahan moved to the United States (briefly relocating to Brooklyn, New York) and the band finally split, albeit amicably.

[13] An EP of Moonshake remixes – originally commissioned to promote the Dirty & Divine album – was belatedly issued in 1999, though this release was disowned by Callahan.

The band briefly experimented with an expanded garage-rock lineup, but did not release any more material (although Buechele later contributed to the revived Bark Psychosis).

He also began work on a new blog called 'On the Rock'n'Roll' dealing with "a history of making music on the dole, incorporating anecdotes, interviews, musical selections, social history, dirty squatters, social security scroungers, workshy ponces and a whole load of cultural misappropriation", for which the first entry related to Moonshake performing a 1997 record label showcase in New Orleans while Callahan and Michael Rother were simultaneously waiting for imminent DSS Restart interviews back in the UK.

[23] In 2022, Callahan and Fiedler collaborated on a remastering of the debut Moonshake album Eva Luna for a deluxe edition, which was released on vinyl and as a download by Beggars Arkive.

The connection also went the other way: Stereolab's Mary Hansen and Katherine Gifford provided backing vocals on Moonshake's last album Dirty and Divine.