He formed Big Dumb Face with his brother Scott in 1998 and left Limp Bizkit in 2001 to start side projects including Eat the Day and The Damning Well.

Borland is known for his sonic experimentation and elaborate visual appearance, which has included face and body paint, masks and uniforms.

Borland's initial interest in music took the form of drumming, but this ended quickly due to his parents' disapproval of percussive instruments in the home.

Borland then relocated to Jacksonville, Florida with his parents where, disillusioned with the local music scene, he began attending the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.

[1] Eventually, finding himself forced into church attendance and feeling a lack of interest in religion, Borland's frustration and confinement pushed him to move out of his parents' house at the age of 18.

[1] Borland joined Limp Bizkit, a band formed by Fred Durst, Sam Rivers and John Otto.

[5] In 2000, Durst announced that the band's third studio album would be titled Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water.

[6] The album title is intended to sound like a fictional band; the phrase "Chocolate Starfish" referred to Durst himself, as he had frequently been called an asshole.

[17] Shortly afterward, Borland had found three potential singers for the project, with one presumably being the previously announced Adam Yas.

[14] Despite his claims that the three discovered vocalists were the best options available, producer Ezrin didn't believe in their abilities enough to allow Eat The Day to move forward with the production of their album, going as far as calling the singers "terrible".

In order to improve the situation, Borland attempted to bring in Danny Lohner, which resulted in further clashes with Ezrin and ground the project to a halt.

Borland had discussed plans to write and perform on the next From First To Last album, but he left the band when Black Light Burns' busy schedule started to pick up, leaving no room to work with From First to Last.

Black Light Burns released its début album, Cruel Melody in the spring of 2007 to critical acclaim.

[25] In 2008, Borland, along with Richard Fortus and Sugizo, supported Japanese metal band X Japan at their sold out reunion concerts at the Tokyo Dome.

In 2009, the original lineup of Limp Bizkit reunited and began touring, which resulted in a second Black Light Burns record being put on the backburner.

Borland performed live for the event on October 4, 2013, along with The Crystal Method, Tina Guo, and Black Light Burns alumni Danny Lohner and Joe Letz.

[36] On May 3, 2016, Borland released an instrumental solo album named Crystal Machete on his personal record label (Edison Sound), which saw him stepping outside his comfort zone by featuring no distorted guitars or vocals.

In winter 2016 Limp Bizkit embarked on a co-headlining UK tour with Korn, including dates at Wembley Arena with support from Madball.

[39] In June 2017 he posted on social media that Big Dumb Face will be returning that year, eventually confirming that the new album, Where Is Duke Lion?

In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Borland began publicly releasing previously unheard material from Eat the Day and Goatslayer, an experimental project he had with brother Scott since the two were teenagers.

On December 5 Borland announced that he finished recording and mixing his second solo album The Astral Hand, which was released three days later.

Shortly after embarking on a tour with Korn, Ibanez contacted Borland and gave him a number of seven-string Universe guitars, essentially for free, which he continued to use extensively.

This was eventually replaced by a custom-made Master Guitars "Cremona" 4-string made by luthier George Gorodnitski, a friend of DJ Lethal's father.

A semi-hollow body guitar with a large body and new Yamaha high-output split field humbuckers, made exclusively for that guitar, it also came with the Yamaha Quick Change finger-clamp locking tremolo system, which rids the user of having to cut the ball ends off of the strings, which is very unusual for a locking tremolo.

Borland was endorsed by Jackson shortly before the release of Gold Cobra, and owns several Rhoads guitars, which he uses on Limp Bizkit shows.

In the mid 2000s, on the recording of Cruel Melody and The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1), Borland's main amp was the Diezel VH4.

Starting with the 2008 recording of The Moment You Realize You're Going to Fall Borland played mainly Orange Amps (specifically the Thunderverb 100 models) since touring in support of Cruel Melody began and has continued to use them since then, also on Gold Cobra.

[60] His guitar playing has made use of octave shapes, and choppy, eighth-note rhythms, sometimes accompanied by muting his strings with his left hand, creating a percussive sound.

[60] Borland has also made use of unevenly accented syncopated sixteenth notes to create a disorienting effect, and hypnotic, droning licks.

[60] Borland uses a locking vibrato system quite extensively to "dive bomb" notes in the middle of guitar parts, as heard in songs like Limp Bizkit's "Hot Dog" and "Get a Life".