In late 1990, Fiction Records founder, and manager of The Cure, Chris Parry got involved with the London station, even though at that point it still did not have any official authorisation to operate.

Xfm was officially created in London in 1992 by Jacob [6] and Parry, with the station broadcasting at festivals and legally from Fiction's Charlotte Street headquarters on short-term licences.

When the station faced difficulties in 1993, Smith and Parry organised a one-off open air festival titled XFM Great Expectations in London's Finsbury Park on 13 June, with the Cure at the top of the bill.

[8][9] However, two years later, Xfm was awarded what was to be the final London-wide FM licence, and the station went on air on a permanent basis on 1 September 1997.

On 23 August that year, Xfm was closed down for four days, during which a test tape featuring mainstream soft rock acts was looped.

Listeners also lodged objections with the Radio Authority, which found Xfm to be acting in a manner contrary to its licence requirements, and a degree of alternative output was eventually restored, particularly through night-time playlists and specialist shows.

This came to an end after the Radio Authority fined Xfm £50,000 for breakfast presenter Tom Binns' jokes about bestiality on air.

[12] Xfm has held 28-day Restricted Service Licence FM broadcasts in a number of British cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow.

By 2002, the station had added many specialist shows, such as London Express, The A-X of Alternative Music presented by Steve Taylor and generating a book published in 2004,[13] and The Remix.

Also in 2005, Xfm was among the bidders for the regional north east franchise on 97.5 FM,[14] but this licence was ultimately awarded to Smooth Radio by Ofcom.

In May 2007, in an attempt to cut costs, the parent company of Xfm, GCap Media, announced that they would be removing all presenters from the daytime (10 am–4 pm) lineup and replacing them with a jukebox based upon listener requests through their websites.

[17] On 11 February 2008 GCap Media announced that they would be selling the analogue licence for the Manchester, Scotland and South Wales stations,[18] retaining only XFM London.

After this announcement, in early 2008, breakfast show host Alex Zane admitted on air that the future of the London station was also being reviewed, even making jokey references to perhaps being out of a job soon.

[19] In September 2011 a new Xfm schedule began, and included Mary Anne Hobbs moving to a re-launched evening show, Music:Response.

[20] The show Import:Export, produced and directed by Redefined Media, was resurrected and linked to KROQ-FM Los Angeles.

Xfm aired its last day of programming on Sunday 13 September 2015, with Lliana Bird playing out the final song 'Kick Out The Jams' by MC5 and bidding an emotional farewell to the station.

The first song played on the rebranded Radio X, by Chris Moyles just before 7 am on 21 September, was "Love Machine" by Girls Aloud, an off-format nod to media reports of a male bias by the new station.

The film features interviews with former Xfm presenters like Gary Crowley, Ricky Gervais, Steve Lamacq, Stephen Merchant and Claire Sturgess, as well as musicians like The Libertines' Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, Alan McGee and Sonya Madan.