The band consists of vocalists and guitarists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener, drummer Laurence "Loz" Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt.

They have been recognised as one of the key pioneers of shoegaze, an alternative rock subgenre that emerged to prominence in the United Kingdom during the early 1990s.

[6] The band formed in the summer of 1988 and played their first gig as Ride for the College's Christmas Party towards the end of the year.

While still at Banbury, the band produced a demo tape, recorded in Queralt's bedroom and hallway, including the tracks "Chelsea Girl" and "Drive Blind".

Bell said that the band kept putting out new material to remain fresh in listeners' minds, comparing it to the release schedules of the Beatles and the Jam.

[11] Spacemen 3, Loop, Dinosaur Jr., the Fall, Pixies, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Ultra Vivid Scene, and the Byrds also proved influential.

[8] However, its followup, "Twisterella", disappointed and barely scraped the top 40 despite extremely high expectations, and Creation stopped promoting the album as a result.

A double weekend of gigs with The Charlatans that year ('Daytripper') kept them in the public eye amid a wider lack of interest in the shoegazing scene.

Gardener and Bell had led the band away from their shoegazing roots to become more contemporary, hoping to change their style with the times.

Bell penned most of the songs while Gardener provided only one - the tension within the band leading to an inability to write meaningful musical pieces.

Castle on the Hill, written by Bell, was a lament for the band's situation and contains references to Gardener's self-imposed exile from the group.

Gardener walked out during the album's mixing sessions, and the band announced their break-up shortly before its release in March 1996.

The album was described by AllMusic as "an abomination of '70s/Lenny Kravitz clichés, full of third- and fourth-rate tunes and, ultimately, bad blood", going on to say "the words are just plain awful throughout, not even worth printing".

[20] Rolling Stone were more complimentary, stating "the album is saved from maudlin self-obsession because it's rawer and rocks harder than anything else Ride have recorded".

1 but this project was permanently dissolved when he was asked to play bass for Oasis after having turned down the opportunity to join Gay Dad.

From 2003 to 2005, Gardener toured extensively, sometimes with the help of Oxford friends Goldrush, in order to personally fund a full-length studio album.

Any thoughts of permanently re-forming the band, however, were previously explicitly denied by Bell, with the reasoning that it would not live up to expectations.

On 19 November 2014, it was announced that Ride had reunited again for a series of tour dates in Europe and North America, in May and June 2015.

[28] The reunion was originally meant for touring only, but after playing shows together again, the band decided that the experience should also lead to the recording of a new album.

[31] It made number 11 in the UK album charts and gained critical and fan approval upon its release, supported by a tour of Europe and North America across the summer and autumn of 2017.

On 27 May 2018 they played a hometown gig, as first support to James, in Oxford's South Parks, as part of the two-day "Common People" festival (the previous day had been in Southampton).

[32] Ride played the 2022 edition of the Primavera Sound festival, performing Going Blank Again and Nowhere in full on two separate days.