School friends Mark Gardener (guitar/vocals) and Andy Bell (guitar/vocals) formed Ride in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1988, with drummer Laurence Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt. Having toyed with the idea of calling themselves Donkey, they named themselves after a piece of art done by Gardener.

Within a year they had been spotted by Creation Records supremo Alan McGee and promptly signed up. Their debut, self-titled EP, including live favourites Chelsea Girl and Drive Blind, was released to rave reviews in early 1990, closely followed by the Play and Fall EPs, with the latter two making it into the lower reaches of the UK Top 40. Expectation was high for debut LP Nowhere, which promptly reached the Number 11 upon its October 1990 release.

The next two years saw Ride at the peak of their popularity, consolidated by well received second album Going Blank Again (1992) – which spawned their only Top 10 hit, Leave Them All Behind - and a second-on-the-bill performance at the 1992 Reading Festival.

However, as shoegazing declined in popularity and Britpop became dominant, third album Carnival Of Light, released in 1994, found them taking an ill-advised change in musical direction, aiming for a more mainstream sound. Although it gave them a second successive Top 5 album, its time in the charts was short-lived and alienated much of their fanbase, leading to intra-band tensions.

Ride returned to the studio in the summer of 1995, although the tension between Bell and Gardener dogged the recording sessions. Upon the completion of the album in August 1995, Bell quit, swiftly followed by Gardener. The band had already split by the time Tarantula was released in March 1996, and after poor reviews the album was deleted after a week.

After the split, Bell reappeared as leader of Hurricane #1, earning further chart success at the tail-end of Britpop, before hitting paydirt by joining Oasis as bassist in 1999 (having sensibly turned down an offer to join Gay Dad, with whom he’d been touring, full-time). Bell and Colbert formed Animalhouse, but despite favourable reviews failed to match their earlier success.