The BBC performance included a new member, keyboard player Karl Wallinger[10] (a multi-instrumentalist and Beatles fanatic who'd previously been in the pre-Alarm band Quasimodo as well as having spent a spell as musical director for The Rocky Horror Show).

The band then consisted of Mike Scott on vocals and guitar, Anthony Thistlethwaite on saxophone and mandolin, Wallinger on keyboards, Roddy Lorimer on trumpets, Martyn Swain on bass and Kevin Wilkinson on drums.

Late in the sessions, future Waterboy Steve Wickham added his violin to the track "The Pan Within"; he had been invited after Scott had heard him on a Sinéad O'Connor demo recorded at Karl Wallinger's house.

[23][24] The band's line-up changed once again with Scott, Wickham and Thistlethwaite (the latter now focussing at least as much on mandolin as on saxophone) now joined by Trevor Hutchinson on bass and a succession of drummers, starting with Peter McKinney.

[25] In late November 1986, Scott, Thistlethwaite and Wickham (minus Hutchinson) spent a week in California recording roots and roots-inspired music with producer Bob Johnston and various American session players.

Patti Smith Group drummer Jay Dee Daugherty was briefly a member of the band for the Spiddal sessions, which featured the Scott, Wickham, Thistlethwaite and Hutchinson core augmented by visiting West Coast Irish folk musicians.

[31] Fisherman's Blues was released in October 1988, finally pulling together various tracks from the vast stockpile recorded in Dublin and Spiddal over the previous three years and showcasing many of the guest musicians and temporary members that had played with the band during that time.

The Waterboys toured to support Fisherman's Blues with a lineup of Scott, Wickham, Thistlethwaite, Hutchinson, Daugherty, Kilduff, Lorimer and two other musicians who'd contributed to the album – whistle/flute/piano player Colin Blakey (a traditionally-minded member of Scottish folk-punk band We Free Kings) and veteran Irish Sean-nós singer Tomás Mac Eoin.

[34] By summer 1989 the lineup of the band had changed yet again, with Kilduff, Mac Eoin and Lorimer departing and Daugherty being replaced by Dublin drummer Noel Bridgeman (another contributor to Fisherman's Blues).

Scott had also recruited teenage accordionist Sharon Shannon, already a rising Irish folk star, as part of his developing plan to bring "the marriage of rock'n'roll and trad" into the band.

Scott's initial concept was "(a) dream of merging trad and pop in a rootsy Sgt Pepper"[36] but as recording progressed he realised that the production process exposed flaws within the band and compromises in the music, which began to slowly unravel both the existing line-up and the Waterboys' Celtic focus.

[7][38] Louisianan drummer Ken Blevins, a more rock-oriented musician, was recruited to replace Bridgeman, but it became evident that the Room to Roam music didn't work without a fiddle in the band, and Shannon and Blakey were asked to leave.

Unable to play the folk-and-roots material of the past five years, the Waterboys doggedly re-embraced a rock sound and reverted to sets drawn from their first three albums, brand new songs written post-Room to Roam and Dylan covers.

He abandoned the "Waterboys" name, left New York and moved to northeast Scotland for the first of several stays at the Findhorn Foundation, exploring the esoteric spiritual ideas which he'd first encountered in London bookstores during the early 1980s.

[48] In 1994, having divided the intervening time between Dublin and the Findhorn Foundation, Scott returned to London and embarked on a solo career which produced two albums – the almost wholly acoustic Bring 'Em All In (1995) and the rock-and-soul-inspired Still Burning (1995).

[51] Also during 1999, Scott began re-establishing his musical direction, "bringing (him)self up to speed with rock'n'roll" and basing his new sound on a "psychedelic elemental roar" aided by assorted effects pedals, an Electro-Harmonix MicroSynth, a blues harmonica microphone, harmoniums, a Hindu beat box and a Theremin.

)[54][55] By the summer of 2000, Scott had assembled a new Waterboys lineup – himself on voice and guitar, Richard Naiff on keyboards and organs, bass player Livingston Brown and drummer Jeremy Stacey.

[56] Scott, Wickham and Naiff were the core of the Waterboys by 2003, when the group changed direction once again and released Universal Hall, a mostly acoustic album with a return of some Celtic influences from the Fisherman's Blues era as well as aspects of New Age music and dance electronica.

Their first official live album, Karma to Burn, was released in 2005 – with Carlos Hercules on drums, Steve Walters on bass and a guest appearance by Sharon Shannon on accordion – showing off the band's acoustic and electric sides.

Scott, Naiff and Wickham were joined in the studio by Leo Abrahams (lead guitar), bass player Mark Smith and drummer Brian Blade, while further contributions were made by further former Waterboys from various recording and touring bands (Jeremy Stacey, Roddy Lorimer, Chris Bruce and Thighpaulsandra).

This line-up came up to an end over the course of 2009 – Richard Naiff left in February to spend more time with his family, while Smith died suddenly and unexpectedly in November 2009 at the age of forty-nine,[57][58] leaving Scott and Wickham as the band core.

The band line-up for this album centred on Scott, Wickham and the new Waterboys members James Hellawell (keyboards), Marc Arciero (bass) and Ralph Salmins (drums), joined by guests including oboist Kate St. John and Irish folk singer Katie Kim.

On 21 May 2019, the band shared the music video for the third single off the record, "Ladbroke Grove Symphony": a tribute to the former bohemian heart of West London in which Mike Scott invoked his time living and writing among the crumbling, seaside-esque streets of Notting Hill during the 1980s.

[77][78] On 3 December 2021, the Waterboys released another box set, The Magnificent Seven, containing archive live, studio and session recordings of the 1989–1990 Room to Roam band featuring Scott, Wickham, Bridgeman, Anthony Thistlethwaite, Trevor Hutchinson, Sharon Shannon and Colin Blakey.

[88] Other contributing factors include women and love, punk music's DIY ethic,[citation needed] the British poetic tradition, and Scott's experiences at Findhorn,[89] where he lived for some years.

Fisherman's Blues, and more particularly Room to Roam, traded "The Big Music"'s keyboards and brass for traditional instruments such as tin whistle, flute, fiddle, accordion, harmonica, and bouzouki.

Rolling Stone describes the sound as "an impressive mixture of rock music and Celtic ruralism..., Beatles and Donovan echoes and, of course, lots of grand guitar, fiddle, mandolin, whistle, flute and accordion playing".

[2] For 2003's Universal Hall, however, Wickham had once again rejoined the band, and that album saw a return of the acoustic folk instrumentation of the late 1980s Waterboys, with the exception of the song "Seek the Light", which is instead an idiosyncratic EBM track.

The Waterboys have recorded poems set to music by writers including William Butler Yeats ("The Stolen Child" and "Love and Death"), George MacDonald ("Room to Roam"), and Robert Burns ("Ever to Be Near Ye").

A member of the Academy of American Poets writes that "the Waterboys' gift lies in locating Burns and Yeats within a poetic tradition of song, revelry, and celebration, re-invigorating their verses with the energy of contemporary music".