[1][2] The Fall's long-term musicians included drummers Paul Hanley, Simon Wolstencroft and Karl Burns; guitarists Craig Scanlon, Marc Riley, and Brix Smith; and bassist Steve Hanley, whose melodic, circular bass lines are widely credited with shaping the band's sound from early 1980s albums such as Hex Enduction Hour to the late 1990s.

Their music was generally characterised by an abrasive, repetitive guitar-driven sound, tense bass and drum rhythms, and Smith's caustic lyrics.

[9] After seeing the Sex Pistols play their second gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in July 1976, they decided to start a group.

Kay Carroll, Una Baines's friend and colleague at the psychiatric hospital, became the group's manager and occasional backing vocalist, as well as Smith's girlfriend.

[16] The Fall were filmed on 13 February 1978 for the Granada TV show What's On, hosted by Tony Wilson, performing "Psycho Mafia", "Industrial Estate" and "Dresden Dolls", featuring the brief line-up of Smith, Bramah, Burns, Baines and McGann.

Baines left in March 1978 after a drug overdose and subsequent nervous breakdown, and was replaced by Yvonne Pawlett; McGann quit that May, in disgust at the group's van driver Steve Davies wearing a Hawaiian shirt as he ferried them to the recording of their first-ever session for influential radio DJ John Peel.

)[16] Martin Bramah blamed the dissolution of the original line-up on Smith's style of leadership, together with Carroll's favouring of her partner: "The break-up wasn't so much about the music, though; it was more how we were being treated as people on a daily basis.

[18] Burns quit the group shortly after the album was recorded, and was replaced by Mike Leigh from Rockin' Ricky, a cabaret band.

In April 1979, Burns was followed by Martin Bramah, co-writer of most of the songs on Live at the Witch Trials[18] and, according to writer Daryl Eslea, "possibly the last true equal to Smith in the group";[17] he went on to form Blue Orchids with Una Baines.

[16] On 30 July 1979, "Rowche Rumble", the Fall's third single, was released featuring the line up of Smith, Scanlon, Riley, Hanley, Pawlett and Leigh.

It was co-produced by Rough Trade's Geoff Travis and Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola and showed a significant improvement in production, which was to continue throughout the period.

As the Fall were going to tour America after the release of Slates, Paul Hanley was denied a visa as he was too young to play American clubs that serve alcohol, which restrict entry to those age 21 or older.

The first record to feature both Burns and Hanley became the "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" single, produced by Richard Mazda and released in Australia and New Zealand in November 1981.

Brix's tenure in the group marked a shift towards the relatively conventional, with the songs she co-wrote often having strong pop hooks and more orthodox verse-chorus-verse structures.

57, 1987),[23] and enjoyed a string of critically acclaimed albums: The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984), This Nation's Saving Grace (1985), Bend Sinister (1986), and The Frenz Experiment (1988).

Paul Hanley quit during the tour supporting The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, and Simon Wolstencroft replaced other drummer Burns after This Nation's Saving Grace.

[24] With Brix's departure in 1989 – both from the band and her marriage to Smith – Bramah returned briefly for 1990's Extricate, the first of the Fall's three albums for Phonogram Records.

Dave Bush joined on keyboards for 1992's Code: Selfish, followed by the band's return to an independent record label for The Infotainment Scan (1993), Middle Class Revolt (1994), and Cerebral Caustic (1995).

That year also saw the start of a torrent of compilations of live, demo and alternative versions of songs on the Fall's new label Receiver Records.

The next album, Levitate (1997), toyed with drum and bass and polarised opinion (long-serving drummer Simon Wolstencroft left halfway through the recording sessions, and was replaced–again–by Karl Burns).

The Real New Fall LP (renamed from Country on the Click after an earlier mix of the album appeared on Internet file sharing networks) followed in 2003, with a slightly different mix and some extra tracks for the US version, after which Jim Watts was sacked (replaced by Steve Trafford) and Milner was replaced by a returning Spencer Birtwistle.

[30] In March 2012, the band were chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he curated in Minehead, England.

This would be Elena Poulou's last album with the band: in a 2016 interview with Mojo Magazine, Smith announced that she had resigned;[38] they would divorce that year.

Following Smith's death, Greenway, Spurr and Melling recruited singer and guitarist Sam Curran to form a new band, Imperial Wax.

His condition led to him falling and suffering bone fragmentation a number of times from the mid 2000s, leading to his performing several dates in a wheelchair and cast.

A heavy smoker, Smith had long suffered from throat and respiratory problems; yet his work ethic or output never declined and he continued to release a new album close to once a year.

[49] His lyrics, delivered in a heavy Mancunian accent, are often cryptic,[5] absurdist and inscrutable, and were described by critic Simon Reynolds as "a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique, one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn.

[51] Thematically, his frequently densely layered lyrics often centre around descriptions of urban grotesques, gloomy landscapes, "crackpot history", and are infused with regional slang.

He mentioned how he was drawn to cheap and misspelled posters, amateur layouts of local papers and printed cash and carry signs with "inverted commas where you don't need them".

[61] The 1990s indie acts Pavement (who recorded a version of "The Classical") and Elastica (Smith contributed vocals to their final EP and album) showed an influence of the Fall, while Suede parodied the band with "Implement Yeah!