One of the Hillfoots Villages on the A91, which runs from Stirling to St. Andrews, Tillicoultry is situated at the southern base of the Ochil Hills, which provide a spectacular backdrop.

The estate of Tillicoultry was taken from Aleumus de Meser in 1261 by Alexander III for failure to render due feudal services.

The origins of the village lie in the Westertown (previously Cairnstown) area, where the road to Stirling crossed the Tillicoultry Burn.

Traces of a Druid circle, sixty feet in diameter, were found in the eastern area of the parish at the end of the 18th century.

A Pictish fortress stood upon the Castle Craig, near the current site of Craigfoot Quarry on Wood Hill, to the west of Tillicoultry Glen.

Due to the rapid growth of the village during the 19th century, there were problems with overcrowding, poor housing, high infant mortality, water supply and drainage.

Despite the growth in car ownership and the corresponding decline in public transport, Tillicoultry, and indeed all the Hillfoots villages, retain a regular bus service.

The old Harviestoun estate, where Archibald Tait (1811–82), Archbishop of Canterbury, spent much of his boyhood, lies East-North-East of the village.

The burn which runs off the Ochils and down through the glen into west of the village provided an attractive source of water for the early textile industry in Tillicoultry, being used for the washing and dying of wool.

Textile mills and coal mines remained the biggest employers of the local population until the first half of the 20th century.

In the 1950s the most recent colliery (map) to be worked, on the south bank of the River Devon, set new productivity records due to a high level of mechanisation.

In 1921 Samuel Jones Limited established a paper mill at Devonvale, the current site of Sterling Furniture.

Quarrying no longer takes places in Tillicoultry; the company's Head office is based in nearby Kincardine.

Following a particularly wet summer and torrential rainfall over a 12-hour period, Tillicoultry Burn burst its banks on the morning of 28 August 1877.

The Alloa Advertiser described the rainfall as 'not simply heavy rain; it was a terrific downpour- persistent, incessant, it fell in bucketfuls- to use our expressive vernacular it came down like "hale water"'.