It was founded in 1986 by broadcast journalists Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, who were presenters of the BBC television music series The Old Grey Whistle Test.

[9] The end of the print version of Q was blamed both on lower circulation and advertising revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as being "a symptom of an expert-free internet age.

This practice (known as the "spine line") has since become commonplace among British lifestyle magazines, including Q's sister publication Empire and the football monthly FourFourTwo.

In January 2008, Mojo was launched by EMAP as a rival to Uncut and focused on all the rock stars, now viewed upon as being heritage and classic, that Q originally featured in its pages in 1986.

[citation needed] In February 2012, Andrew Harrison was recruited as editor, replacing Paul Rees during a difficult period when on-line publishing had led to a 17% decline in the magazine's circulation in the first half of 2012.

[19] He left just 14 months later, according to the Guardian, "as print music magazines continue to endure torrid times" and even free titles were failing to compete against blogs and platforms dependent on online advertising.

[17] In July 2020, Bauer published a Special Collector's Issue of the magazine (Q414), which it had intended to be the last edition[20][21] before deciding to attempt to sell the publication to another media group.

[23][15] In the early days of publication, the magazine's format was much closer in tone to that of Rolling Stone (though with some of the characteristic humour of former Smash Hits staff shining through), with Tom Hibbert's "Who The Hell..." feature (including interviews with people like Jeffrey Archer, Robert Maxwell, Ronnie Biggs[24] and Bernard Manning) and film reviews.

In the 1990s, former NME staff writers, such as Andrew Collins, Danny Kelly, Stuart Maconie, and Charles Shaar Murray joined Paul Du Noyer and Adrian Deevoy at Q.

Music coverage in IPC's 'inkie' indie weekly[26] was becoming more serious after Melody Maker closed down and so writers like Maconie[27] felt more at home at a publication that would still run tongue-in-cheek articles such as "40 Celebs About Whom We Only Know One Thing" and "Do I Have To Wear This, Boss?"

[29] Lady Gaga posed topless in a shoot for the April 2010 issue of the magazine, which was banned by stores in the United States due to the singer revealing too much of her breasts.

[32] In its early years it was sneered at as "uncool and lacking edge", with Steven Wells from NME calling it "the magazine that says 'Hey kids, it's alright to like Dire Straits'".

[15] In a 2001 interview in Classic Rock, Marillion singer Steve Hogarth criticised Q's refusal to cover the band despite publishing some positive reviews.