They later released The Soft Bulletin (1999), which was NME magazine's Album of the Year, followed by the critically acclaimed Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002).

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 with Wayne Coyne on guitar, his brother Mark singing lead vocals, Michael Ivins on bass and Dave Kotska on drums.

One possibility is that it was inspired by the 1953 feature film Geraldine, in which comedian Stan Freberg sings several songs, including one named "Flaming Lips".

However, according to an article in the September 16, 1993, issue of Rolling Stone, Mark and Wayne[2] came up with the name as a reference to a rumor about a classmate who contracted genital herpes after receiving cunnilingus from a partner with active cold sores.

Drummer Nathan Roberts replaced English and guitarist Jonathan Donahue (also a member of the alternative rock band Mercury Rev) joined in 1989.

During this period, Coyne made his transition to a higher, more strained vocal style akin to Neil Young, which he first used on Telepathic Surgery's "Chrome Plated Suicide" and has employed ever since.

The album's release was halted for nearly a year because of the use of a sample from Michael Kamen's score for the film Brazil in the track "You Have to Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil's Brain)", which required a lengthy clearance process.

Because of the success of the album and the single "She Don't Use Jelly", the band was featured on four popular television series: Beverly Hills, 90210, Late Show with David Letterman, Charmed and Beavis and Butt-head.

In September 2014, the band paid tribute to Jones and the impact his music had on their developing sound by performing Transmissions from the Satellite Heart live at First Avenue.

The departure of Jones and a general dissatisfaction with standard "rock" music led to the three remaining members of the group redefining the direction of the band with the experimental Zaireeka (1997), a four-CD album which is intended to be heard by playing all four CDs in four separate CD players simultaneously.

A low-powered FM transmitter was set up at shows, and the concert was simultaneously broadcast to small Walkman-style receivers and headphones made available for free to audience members.

The documentary featured several rare archival photos and videos along with interviews from the members, producer Dave Fridmann, and manager Scott Booker.

Following the concerts' cancellation, the band entered Tarbox Road Studio with producer Dave Fridmann and began work on their eleventh album, the more organic-sounding At War with the Mystics.

In 2005 the band was the subject of a documentary called Fearless Freaks, featuring appearances by other artists and celebrities such as Gibby Haynes, the White Stripes, Beck, Christina Ricci, Liz Phair, Juliette Lewis, Steve Burns, Starlight Mints, and Adam Goldberg.

The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins", earned a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance,[10] making it twice in a row the Lips have been nominated in that category and won.

Following the April 4, 2006, release of At War with the Mystics, the band began a tour to support the album in the United Kingdom, including a finale at the Royal Albert Hall and performances at the O2 Wireless Festival.

The Oklahoma House of Representatives failed to confirm the choice after Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City attacked the band for its use of offensive language, and Rep. Corey Holland, R-Marlow said he had been "really offended" when Michael Ivins came to the announcement ceremony in March wearing a red T-shirt with a yellow hammer and sickle.

In December of the same year, the band released their second album of the year and thirteenth overall, The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon, a track-for-track cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, which was recorded with Stardeath and White Dwarfs and features guest appearances from Henry Rollins and Peaches.

It contains four songs and was released in a similar way to the earlier Neon Indian EP, in that the run was extremely limited and consisted of randomly colored, one of a kind discs.

This show was a special two-night, one morning event in which they played the entirety of The Soft Bulletin one night and a new revamped version of The Dark Side of the Moon and collaborated with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros for a performance of "Do You Realize??"

The song played live on a never-ending audio stream on a special website set up by the band[23] and was made available for purchase as a hard drive encased in an actual human skull, limited to 13 copies.

Like the three albums often referred to as "a trilogy"[32] accounting for the majority of the band's mainstream production over the past 15 years (consisting of The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and At War With the Mystics), The Terror adheres to the love story/space opera narrative structure while taking a much darker approach.

As noted in a review by Pitchfork, "The Terror deals in more personal turmoil– loneliness, depression, anxiety... Perhaps not coincidentally, the album was preceded by news of Coyne's separation from his partner of 25 years, Michelle, and of multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd relapsing temporarily.

"[33] Jon Pareles of The New York Times summarized the thematic content of the album fairly succinctly when he wrote, "The lyrics [of 'The Terror'] find cosmic repercussions in a lovers' breakup; loneliness turns to contemplation of grim human compulsions and the end of the universe.

In November 2013 they produced and curated The Time Has Come to Shoot You Down…What a Sound, a reworking of the Stone Roses' debut album featuring New Fumes, Spaceface, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Foxygen, Peaking Lights, Poliça and others.

In May, Scurlock claimed he had been fired for negative comments about Wayne Coyne's friend Christina Fallin, the daughter of Oklahoma's governor and leader of a band called Pink Pony.

"[38] Coyne went even further, calling Scurlock a "pathological liar" and stated that he never meant his defense of Fallin, which included posting a photo of his dog in a feathered headdress, to be offensive but that he was "very sorry, to anybody that is following my Instagram or my Twitter, if I offended anybody of any religion, any race, any belief system.

The album is described by Coyne as a combination of Pink Floyd and Portishead and "a slightly wiser, sadder, more true version" of Cyrus' pop music output.

In a June interview with Danish music blog Regnsky, Wayne Coyne said that a new album would come out in January 2017, even though they had originally planned for it to be released in October 2016.

[47][48] On Record Store Day, April 22, 2017, the Flaming Lips released Onboard the International Space Station Concert for Peace, a re-recording of seven tracks from Oczy Mlody in a faux live setting.