The band's name comes from the character Travis Henderson (played by Harry Dean Stanton) from the film Paris, Texas (1984).

It matched the success of The Man Who, debuting atop the UK Albums Chart[10] as well as peaking at thirty-nine on the US Billboard 200.

[11] Subsequent releases, 12 Memories (2003), The Boy with No Name (2007), Ode to J. Smith (2008), Where You Stand (2013), Everything at Once (2016), 10 Songs (2020), and L.A. Times (2024), also achieved commercial success.

With brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn on bass and keyboards, in 1993, the five-some released a privately made CD, The Glass Onion EP, featuring the tracks "Dream On", "The Day Before", "Free Soul", and "Whenever She Comes Round".

"[17] While on a visit to Scotland, American engineer and producer Niko Bolas, a long-time Neil Young and Rolling Stones associate, tuned into a Travis session on Radio Scotland, and heard something in the band's music which instantly made him travel to Perth to see them.

[17] Before heading to New York, Healy suggested that the band should send a demo to Charlie Pinder of Sony Music Publishing, whom they had known for a few years and regularly sent songs to, saying: "If he's not into it, then we'll [leave].

"[17] Pinder was immediately impressed by the song "All I Want to Do is Rock", which he felt was a dramatic change for the band: "It was harder, more exciting, sexy; all things that they never really were.

The immediate impact was that the founding member and keyboard player Geoff Martyn was removed while the bassist, his brother Chris, was replaced with Healy's best friend Dougie Payne.

[17] Payne, who had not played bass guitar before, joined the band in 1994 after having completed a crash course of a couple of weeks.

[18] Payne played with the new line-up for the first time in a free space above The Horse Shoe Bar in Glasgow.

With around twenty good songs ready, they then approached managers Colin Lester and Ian McAndrew of Wildlife Entertainment who then introduced the band to Andy MacDonald, owner of Go!

Worse, many critics who had raved about the rocky Good Feeling criticised the album for the band's move into more melodic, melancholic material.

The album also had an impact across the Atlantic, the popularity in the US of the single "Coming Around", a non-album track with Byrdsesque harmonies and 12-string guitar, enhancing this.

In 2002, drummer Neil Primrose suffered a serious injury after he dived head-first into a shallow swimming pool while on tour in France, just after a concert at the Eurockéennes festival.

[31] Produced by Travis themselves, Tchad Blake, and Steve Orchard, the album marked a move into more organic, moody, and political territory for the band.

The album's lead single "Re-Offender" was a commercial success for the band, reaching number seven in both Scotland and the United Kingdom.

[38] Following a brief tour of the United Kingdom, during which the band tested new material, they recorded their sixth album, in two weeks between February–March 2008, having been inspired by the speed and simplicity of their recent recording session with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick while participating in a BBC programme celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Sgt.

[50] A post from Travis on their Instagram page confirmed that recording had commenced on the band's eighth album at Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin in January 2015.

The film stars Wyndham Wallace, a music journalist and acquaintance of Healy's in Berlin, who was invited to travel with Travis to Mexico because he had previously expressed his distaste for the band.

[57] For the 20th anniversary of The Man Who, the band re-released the album reissue box set, along with the live album Live at Glastonbury '99, a recording of the set that is credited to be "a pivotal moment in kickstarting Travis's commercial success", this being despite the band members feeling that they had performed poorly when they originally performed at Glastonbury in 1999.

[60] As a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the band were unable to schedule a tour to promote the release of 10 Songs; however, when restrictions were lifted, they rarely played any of the tracks from the album live.

On 20 March 2024, Travis debuted the singles "Gaslight" and "Bus", and announced their tenth studio album, L.A. Times, which was released on 12 July 2024.

[61] The album was produced by Tony Hoffer and written by Fran Healy in his studio on the edge of Skid Row, Los Angeles.

[64] The band have played with a number of other artists, including Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Noel Gallagher, and Jason Falkner.

[citation needed] An adaptation of the Oasis song "Half the World Away", as performed by Healy, was used as the intro music for a sketch in The Adam and Joe Show entitled "The Imperial Family".

[citation needed] In June 2007, Travis participated in BBC Radio 2's project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt.

All the album's tracks were re-recorded by contemporary artists, supervised by the original engineer, Geoff Emerick, using the same four-track studio equipment.

The band wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible, even to the extent of recording the guitars in the stairwell of Abbey Road Studios to recreate the acoustics.

[65] In 2010, Travis contributed a live version of their song "Before You Were Young" to the Enough Project and Downtown Records' Raise Hope for Congo compilation.