The Monochrome Set was formed in London in 1978 from the remnants of a college group called The B-Sides, whose members had included Stuart Goddard, later known as Adam Ant.

The band had two more bassists, Jeremy Harrington and Simon Croft, before Andy Warren of the Ants, a childhood friend of Bid, joined in late 1979.

[5] Experimental filmmaker Tony Potts began collaborating with the band in 1979, designing lighting and stage sets with film projections for their live appearances.

[2] This line-up recorded a 1982 single, "Cast a Long Shadow", for Cherry Red, before Booth was in turn replaced by new lead guitarist James 'Foz' Foster (later of David Devant & His Spirit Wife).

Nicholas aka Nick Wesolowski, drummer with the band in the 1980s, was also a photographer for él Records, a subsidiary of Cherry Red Records.He later worked in Risk Management.

In 2010, Bid, Square and Warren reformed the band, with the addition of drummer Jennifer Denitto from Scarlet's Well and keyboard player John Paul Moran.

Following Bid's recovery from an aneurysm in late 2010,[8] they played dates the following year in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Japan and The Netherlands.

The band completed a short tour of the east coast of the US in spring of 2013 and released their 11th studio album, Super Plastic City in the autumn of the same year.

In 2019 they toured the United States again, playing for the first time on the west coast as well as the east and released their 15th studio album, Fabula Mendax in September that year.