[3][4] The band's name was inspired by a page of scribblings found in Healy's preowned copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac which was dated "1 June, The 1975".

The band members met in secondary school and first performed together as teenagers in 2002, before professionally releasing music in 2012 under the independent label Dirty Hit.

1 in the United Kingdom and charted in the Billboard 200, garnering critical praise and appearing in numerous publications' year-end and decade-end lists.

[7] It was followed by Notes on a Conditional Form (2020) and Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022) with the latter receiving a nomination for British Album of the Year at the 2023 Brit Awards.

[10] When the band's prospective singer, Elliot Williams, dropped out after one rehearsal, Healy took over the role playing double duty as lead vocalist and drummer.

"[11] The quartet began as a band playing covers of punk and emo songs at school and at Healy's house before eventually writing their own music.

[21][22] Healy recounted that the final name was inspired by scribblings found on the back page of the book On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

[17] Sex EP was described by Paste as "equal parts ethereal and synth pop", with "haunting" and "smooth" vocals.

In a feature article, Elliot Mitchell of When the Gramophone Rings wrote that releasing a string of EPs before the debut album was "a move that he deemed necessary to provide context to the band's broad sound, rather than just building up with singles alone."

Healy said, "We wouldn't have been able to release the album without putting out the EP's first, as we wanted to make sure we could express ourselves properly before dropping this long, ambitious debut record on people.

[32] The 1975 were selling out shows even before the debut of their full-length album as Healy recalled in an interview with Larry Heath of The AU Review.

In an essay on the critical response, he said they have been "the Most Hated and Loved Band in the World" and described "as underrated and overhyped, although the needle has far more often swung towards the former direction".

NME, who had previously been highly critical of the band, praised the album for its scope and ambition, writing that "Any record that burrows as deep into your psyche as ‘I Like It…' should be considered essential.

That's sometimes because his observations are sharp — as a skewering of celebrity squad culture, 'you look famous, let's be friends / And portray we possess something important / And do the things we like' is pretty acute — but more usually because they come loaded with witty self-awareness and deprecation: the endless depictions of vacuous, coke-numbed girls he has met would get wearying were it not for the fact that he keeps turning the lyrical crosshair on himself."

[61] On 13 November 2016, member George Daniel teased the band's third album by releasing a video on his Instagram account captioned "2018", containing snippets of audio along with Healy playing the keyboards.

[68][69] In March 2018, the band deleted many media posts across their accounts going back to July 2017, during their final show at Latitude Festival for I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It.

[71] At the end of April, cryptic posters titled "Music for Cars" appeared in London and Manchester, containing taglines and a Dirty Hit catalogue number, DH00327, amongst a black background.

[76][77] On 31 May 2018, the band released the single "Give Yourself a Try", after premiering as Annie Mac's "Hottest Record in the World" on BBC Radio 1 that same day.

[7] Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork gave the album a score of 8.5, earning it the Best New Music tag, and called it "outrageous and eclectic", as well as "similar to its predecessor in its boundless sense of style, swerving from Afrobeats to brushed-snare jazz balladry to one track that sounds like a trap remix of a Bon Iver ayahuasca trip", but "more purposeful" than I Like It When You Sleep.

[79] However, Conrad Duncan writing for the same site gave the album a positive review, calling it "full of genuine heart, intelligence and wit".

[80] Popmatters criticised the album as bloated and inconsistent, stating "The band's reach exceeds their grasp here, and vocalist/band leader Matt Healy's indulgences are often more tiresome than charming", while still praising it as "fascinating".

The band headlined both Radio 1's Big Weekend in Stewart Park, Middlesbrough on 26 May 2019[82] and Reading and Leeds Festival in August 2019.

This was announced by a countdown on the band's social media accounts, including small snippets of lyrics from the song that fans could piece together.

On 17 February 2020, the band put up a "digital detox" website called MindShowerAI which contained a countdown to their next single as well as several odd messages like “I am doing my mind and my life!” and “I feel comfort and respect.

During this time, lead singer Matty Healy teased future music under the name "Drive Like I Do", and said that the band was working on their fifth studio album, although there was no indication as to when writing, recording, mixing, etc.

[119] Malaysian authorities forced the organisers to immediately halt and cancelled the rest of the three-day festival citing that Healy's "controversial conduct and remarks" are "against the traditions and values of the local culture".

[131] The band's work has been described broadly as pop-rock,[132][133][134][135][136] art pop,[137][138][139] alt-pop,[140][141][142] synth-pop,[143] new wave,[143] and indie rock.

[156] Scott Kerr of AllMusic wrote that the band combined "the dark and youthful themes of sex, love, and fear with ethereal alt-rock music.

[163] For their second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, Healy cited Christina Aguilera,[164] D'Angelo, Roberta Flack, Boards of Canada, and Sigur Rós as inspirations saying that they're "a post-modern pop band that references a million things.

[175] Described as "deftly plucked, palm-muted guitar line, hop, skip and jumping its way across shimmering pop synth work and third-wave emo lyricism," The Big Issue added that it's a "dreamified take on Eighties pop-rock".