Talk Talk were an English rock band formed in 1981, led by Mark Hollis (vocals, guitar, piano), Lee Harris (drums), and Paul Webb (bass).
The group achieved early chart success with the synth-pop singles "Talk Talk" (1982), "It's My Life" and "Such a Shame" (both 1984) before moving towards more experimental music in the mid-1980s,pioneering what became known as post-rock.
Talk Talk achieved widespread critical success, while selling records in Europe and the UK with the singles "Life's What You Make It" (1985) and "Living in Another World" (1986), and in 1988 they released their fourth album Spirit of Eden, which was critically acclaimed yet commercially less successful.

Friction with the band's label, EMI, resulted in legal action and countersuing.
Webb departed, and the band switched to Polydor for their final album, 1991's Laughing Stock, but split soon afterwards.
Singer Mark Hollis released one solo album in 1998 before retiring from the music industry.
The band's founding bass player and drummer, Paul Webb and Lee Harris, played in several bands together; long-term collaborator Tim Friese-Greene continued in the business as a musician and producer.
Talk Talk saw a mild resurgence in popularity after the band No Doubt covered their highest charting US single, "It's My Life" in 2003.

The success of The Colour of Spring afforded the band a bigger budget and schedule for the recording of their next album.
Over a year in the making, and featuring contributions from many outside musicians, Spirit of Eden was released in 1988, on EMI's Parlophone label.
The album was assembled from many hours of improvised instrumentation that Hollis and Friese-Greene had edited and arranged using digital equipment.
The result was a mix of rock, jazz, classical, and ambient music.
Critically praised, the album reached the UK Top 20 and was certified Silver by the BPI for sales of over 60,000 copies.
The band announced they would not be attempting to recreate the album live (since, according to Hollis, "People would just want to hear the songs as they are on the album and for me that's not satisfying enough").
Without touring and without music videos and singles as the band originally intended, there was little marketing left that the record company could do; in the end the band grudgingly agreed to a video for the remixed version of "I Believe In You", released as first single.
Hollis, though, was unhappy with the video, as he made clear in an interview with Q Magazine: "I really feel that [the video] was a massive mistake ... I thought just by sitting there and listening and really thinking about what it was about, I could get that in my eyes.
But you cannot do it. It just feels stupid. It was depressing and I wish I'd never done it."

During the making of Spirit of Eden, Talk Talk manager Keith Aspden had attempted to free the band from their record contract with EMI.
"I knew by that time that EMI was not the company this band should be with", Aspden said.
"I was fearful that the money wouldn't be there to record another album."
EMI, however, wished to keep the band on their roster.
After many months of litigation, the band ultimately succeeded in extracting themselves from the contract.
EMI then sued the band, claiming that Spirit of Eden was not "commercially satisfactory", but the case was thrown out of court.
Webb left the band in late 1988.

With the band now released from EMI, the label released the retrospective compilation Natural History in 1990.
It peaked at number 3 on the UK album chart and was certified Gold by the BPI for sales of over 100,000 copies.
It was also an international success and eventually went on to sell more than 1 million copies worldwide.
The 1984 single "It's My Life" was also re-released, and this time became the band's highest charting single in their native country, reaching number 13 on the UK Singles Chart.
A re-release of the single "Life's What You Make It" also reached the Top 30.
Following up on this renewed popular interest in the band, the label then released History Revisited in 1991, a compilation of new remixes, which made the UK Top 40 (it also reached the Top 30 in Germany and the Top 75 in the Netherlands).
The band sued EMI for releasing the remixed material without their permission.