Early music In the early 2000s, Marshall was in a bluegrass sleaze rap band called Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers, who had songs such as "Jesse the Gay" and "Country London". Marshall was credited as "Country Winston Driftwood" and played the banjo, guitar,
dobro,
mandolin, and harmonica. With Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers, at Bosun's Locker, a tiny music club beneath a pasty shop on the
King's Road in Fulham. The jam nights attracted a number of musicians who had an affinity for earthy acoustic music, including
Noah and the Whale and
Laura Marling. Co-founder Mumford started songwriting after seeing Marshall's band Captain Kick, and other similar artists, perform while Mumford was at university in
Edinburgh; Mumford was struggling at the time and found Marshall's music "a glimpse of salvation", especially as Marshall encouraged him to join them on-stage. and was often identified as the comic relief of the line-up. Marshall and Mumford took jobs in the antique shop run by Marshall's mother in order to save money to produce and record music with Mumford & Sons. They toured with Marling and
Johnny Flynn from 2008 to 2009; Marshall was nervous to perform in the United States, knowing that banjo is more common there than in the United Kingdom and their audience would know if he was good or not. In 2009, they cut their tour songs as their first album. The album,
Sigh No More, on which Marshall is credited as "Country Winston", was released that year along with the single "
Little Lion Man"; written by Mumford, the song was nominated at the
2011 Grammy Awards as
Best Rock Song. The band was nominated for the
Grammy for
Best New Artist, and performed at the ceremony with
Bob Dylan and
the Avett Brothers.
Sigh No More won the
Brit Award for British Album of the Year in 2011. The album was influenced by the music of
Fleet Foxes, the Avett Brothers,
Kings of Leon and
Gomez; for
Pitchfork,
Stephen Deusner wrote that the band made this clear by pushing their musical references "with a salesman's insistence." It was released to minimal attention but steadily garnered more positive reviews, and while Deusner criticized the album as derivative, he was impressed that "there are some unexpected textures, mostly courtesy of some guy calling himself Country Winston playing banjo and dobro." They followed the album with near-constant touring, cementing their presence, Chris Richards of
The Washington Post added that the musicians' stage presence, particularly Marshall "thrusting his pelvis like a bluegrass
Rick James", was irritating. In 2010, Mumford & Sons were the band and back-up for Marling's album
I Speak Because I Can and released a joint EP with Marling and Indian group Dharohar Project. Self-titled with all three acts' names, it saw generally warm reviews that praised Marshall's dueling-banjo additions to songs. The group continued to tour extensively, and released their second album,
Babel, which had a more rock sound, in 2012 to mixed reviews. Marshall provided lead vocals for the song "For Those Below". In the same year, Mumford & Sons contributed songs to two films: "The Enemy" for
Wuthering Heights and "Learn Me Right" with
Birdy for the
soundtrack of the
Pixar film
Brave.
Babel became the quickest-selling album of the year, and the growing success of Mumford & Sons led to more detraction, with the band, and its banjo specifically, often criticized as inauthentic; Marshall told
The Guardian that he disagreed, saying they are authentic because they play music that they enjoy and at which they are good. The band embraced other criticisms, creating a
tongue-in-cheek music video for single "
Hopeless Wanderer", parodying their own image. In it, Marshall was portrayed by
Jason Bateman. With
Babel, Marshall shed his "Country Winston" name, saying he had outgrown it (as a holdover from Captain Kick) and had become disillusioned towards
country music; when he began playing the genre he associated it with
bluegrass music, and then found that he did not like the country music he heard in the United States. At the same time, he expressed distaste towards the banjo and said that he does not really know how to play it and had been told by his hero
Jerry Douglas to not learn, quoting Douglas saying: "The reason that it's interesting what you do is that you have no f***ing idea what you're doing!"
Babel won the Grammy for
Album of the Year in 2013, with the band being awarded the
Brit Award for British Group the same year. They were also honored with the
Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement in 2014. The band went on hiatus in 2013, but contributed to a compilation album by
Idris Elba released in 2014, re-recording their song "Home" with
Thandiswa Mazwai. They returned in 2015 with the album
Wilder Mind, on which Marshall was credited as "WN5TN". There is no banjo on
Wilder Mind, an electronic rock album that was influenced by
the National;
Aaron Dessner was a producer. Though his bandmates disagreed, Marshall said that they changed the sound because they did not enjoy touring so much with a limited repertoire. However, he also said that he had warmed to the banjo again after time away from having to play it, and used it on the band's 2015 tour. The album received mediocre reviews, with critics in disagreement on whether losing the banjos improved the band or not;
The Guardian wrote that it "was far less polarising" than their first two albums, due to being "numbingly boring" and lacking the band's
USP. The next year they released an EP,
Johannesburg, with African artists
Baaba Maal,
Beatenberg and
the Very Best; they had been approached to do the project after Marshall worked with Maal on other music. The EP does not use the banjo. in 2018 Mumford & Sons then worked on their fourth album,
Delta, which was released in 2018. The album uses banjo again, but in non-folk ways. Marshall said that since the album was not their first and would not be their last, they felt freedom to branch out in sound. where Agron was filming a movie and they became engaged. Lovett said Marshall "was throwing these pretty left-field sounds out of these writing sessions in Nashville"; Marshall was encouraged by sound engineer Garrett Miller to try more synthesized music, resulting in "Picture You", and composed the first verse and the falsetto hook of "
Woman" there. which was recorded so quickly he did not actually perform on the track on the album. Marshall took the early components of "Woman" to his bandmates in Brooklyn, and Lovett said of the moment: "[it] just felt like something that was very, very different, but also felt really good. Maybe that was a moment that we felt unshackled by anything that we had done previously." with three banjo tracks layered.
Rolling Stone felt that "Picture You" and "Woman" sounded like
Khalid songs;
The Observer compared them to
Coldplay songs. The album received sub-par reviews. With Mumford & Sons, Marshall won multiple awards, including two
Grammys and two
Brit Awards. In March 2021, Marshall faced criticism for lauding ''Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy
, a book written by conservative American journalist and social media personality Andy Ngo. Later that month, Marshall apologised for praising the book and stated that he would be taking a break from the band "to examine [his] blindspots"; in June 2021, he wrote an essay defending his support for Ngo, discussing the reaction to his apology for the tweet, and announcing that he would be permanently leaving Mumford & Sons so that he could exercise free speech about politics without involving his former bandmates. In a 2022 interview with The Sunday Times Magazine'', he said that what made it hard to leave the band was that he had thought they would still be playing together in their sixties.
Individual music and other ventures In 2010, Marshall was involved with a supergroup called
Mt. Desolation, recording music and performing shows with
Ronnie Vannucci Jr. of
The Killers, Tom Hobden of Noah and the Whale, and
Jesse Quin and
Tim Rice-Oxley of
Keane. They released a free download single, "State of Affairs", as well as the self-titled album
Mt. Desolation. In 2012, Marshall played the banjo for the
Dropkick Murphys song "
Rose Tattoo"; the band joked that they "kidnapped" him after playing the same festival, adding that his banjo part is "subtle, but with that rolling finger-picking style, you know it's him when you hear it". Marshall then joined a different, temporary, supergroup called Salvador Dalí Parton in October 2013, with fellow musicians
Gill Landry of
Old Crow Medicine Show; Mike Harris of
Apache Relay; Jake Orrall of
JEFF the Brotherhood; and
Justin Hayward-Young of
the Vaccines. The band, intended as a joke from the start, wrote six songs in 20 minutes on their first day together, held a rehearsal the next day, and performed six shows around
Nashville,
Tennessee, that night before breaking up. He has also pursued comedy, taking
improv classes at the
Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) prior to 2013, He said that he wanted to take the concept of UCB to England, because they "don't have anything like it", and was invited to perform a monologue there;
Vulture wrote that the monologue, about "condoms and being Jewish", "didn't go well." When asked if he is Jewish, Marshall laughingly replied "ish". In 2015, Marshall became interested in
techno music and
electronic dance music after he attended every night of a
James Ford residency at London club
XOYO. Ford had been working with Mumford & Sons on their album
Wilder Mind through his group,
Simian Mobile Disco, and, inspired, Marshall began working on an individual electronic side-project that went nowhere. In 2017, he collaborated with electronic duo
HVOB. Marshall approached HVOB by sending an email that they initially thought was fake. When they began working together, Marshall sent samples to HVOB, who are based in
Vienna. Together they released the single "The Blame Game", on which Marshall contributes vocals, and the album
Silk. They had only planned to release an EP, but quickly chose to extend this to a full album despite needing to meet the same deadline. The album is darker than HVOB's other music, with the duo saying that Marshall took their sound and styled it for a concert rather than club. Marshall and HVOB toured Europe in April 2017 on the fifteen-city Silk Tour. The single and album were positively reviewed. Marshall collaborated individually with
Baaba Maal between 2013 and 2015, at the 2013 and 2014 editions of the Blues du Fleuve festival and playing banjo on Maal's 2015 album
The Traveller. and
Kevin Garrett song "Don't Rush". In November 2022, Marshall undertook a solo US tour, performing in San Francisco, New York and Arizona at events organised by the
Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. In December 2022, he featured on
Ariel Pink's novelty Christmas single "Rudolph's Laptop", co-written with
Alex Trimble of Two Door Cinema Club. In April 2025, Marshall performed with
Oliver Anthony at the inaugural Rural Revival Project in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, a benefit concert for communities affected by
Hurricane Helene. == Political activism ==