Scorn was formed in 1991 in Birmingham by drummer Mick Harris and vocalist/bassist Nic Bullen, former members of the grindcore band Napalm Death.

Since the departure of Bullen in 1995, much of the output has been minimalist beats with an emphasis on very deep bass lines, often resembling dub and trip hop in structure.

[4] In May 1997, Harris decided to end the project in order to finish relations with KK Records, after they refused to fund a collaboration EP with Bill Laswell as mixing engineer and a rapper Kalil.

[8] Scorn returned in 2007 with Stealth on Ad Noiseam with the CD version released on Kurt Gluck's Ohm Resistance label.

This album also marked the first time since Bullen left the project that Harris has worked full-on with another musician (excluding the unreleased EP with rapper Kalil from 1997 and a track Scorn did with David Knight on the "Rise|Converge" compilation in 2000), drummer Yan Treasey.

[14] In June 2022 Mick Harris teased new upcoming Scorn album with guitars by Justin Broadrick plus contributions from Shane Embury.

[15] But in August 2023 Mick Harris posted an update that "Scorn is dead" again since late 2022 and "it was a bad mistake bringing it back after I stopped it in 2012".