Consisting of teenagers Nathan Strejcek, Geordie Grindle, Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, they recorded two demo sessions and the 1980 Minor Disturbance EP before breaking up in November 1980.

They were an early landmark in the D.C. hardcore movement, and MacKaye and Nelson would later form the seminal punk rock outfit Minor Threat.

The Teen Idles were among the first punk groups from the early 1980s hardcore movement to break out of their regional scene to tour and sell nationally.

[2] Their appearance, lyrics and musical style sought to revive a punk movement that they believed had lost its original zeal.

In 1978, Washington teenager MacKaye discovered punk rock through a local college radio station, Georgetown University's WGTB.

[4] The concert inspired the pair; MacKaye later admitted, "It blew my mind because I saw for the first time this huge, totally invisible community that had gathered together for this tribal event.

[5] After seeing a Bad Brains concert, MacKaye and Nelson began playing in a punk band, The Slinkees, with school friends Grindle and Mark Sullivan.

[11] After a number of concerts in D.C. opening for bands such as the Untouchables, the Idles decided to tour the West Coast in August 1980.

When the Teen Idles eventually began their tour, they were refused entry at Los Angeles' Hong Kong Café because of their age.

Previously, at the Mabuhay Gardens in California, the band was allowed entry to the club only after big "X"s were drawn on their hands—this showed that they were under the legal drinking age.

They photocopied it on 11" × 17" paper, which the band members cut out with scissors, folded and glued by hand, then into these inserted the records and lyric sheets.

[21] Strejcek became involved in the running of Dischord, until Nelson and MacKaye, disappointed by his lack of effort, "decided to take it back".

[22] The Teen Idles appeared on several hardcore punk compilations throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most prominently the influential collection Flex Your Head, issued by Dischord in January 1982.

[23] To celebrate the label's 100th release, Dischord issued the Anniversary EP in 1996, comprising the two demo sessions the band had recorded in February and April 1980.

[24][25] According to journalist Michael Azerrad, the Teen Idles "played proto-hardcore tunes that skewered their social milieu".

Like the group's appearance, their lyrical subject matter reacted against the then dominant new wave scene, and the perceived complacency that many first-wave punk bands, including the Clash and the Damned, seemed to have fallen into by the early 1980s.

[2] The Teen Idles were strongly influenced by punk bands in Washington and California, such as Bad Brains,[26] Black Flag,[7] and the Germs.