[2][3] Led by brothers Hamish and David Kilgour, the band rotated through a number of musicians before settling on their well-known and longest running line-up with Robert Scott.

[4] Hamish was friends with Chris Knox through this scene, then-frontperson of early influential New Zealand punk band The Enemy.

The Clean began playing live shows in Dunedin in mid-1978 alongside The Enemy, initially featuring Hamish on guitar, David on drums, Doug Hood on vocals, and Peter Gutteridge on bass.

/ Platypus", was the tied-first release on Roger Shepherd's Flying Nun Records label, alongside The Pin Group's "Ambivalence".

[7] The EP was released on Flying Nun in October, debuting at number five on the New Zealand music chart and staying in the top 20 for almost six months.

They released album Vehicle in 1990, and toured the United States, Britain and Europe multiple times to promote the record.

In 1995, Flying Nun released Abba tribute compilation Abbasalutely, featuring a David Kilgour and Robert Scott cover of "Waterloo" as Cloth, which the liner notes describe as "The Clean minus Hamish".

[10] In 2003, the two-disc compilation Anthology, released on Merge Records, awakened new interest in the band in the US, building on an international reputation that had been enhanced by endorsements from prominent 1990s indie groups such as Pavement and Yo La Tengo.