Chris Corner and Liam Howe met as teenagers in the 1980s, The duo also worked as DJs and producers under the name Line of Flight. Howe and Corner launched Sneaker Pimps as a recording group in 1994. The following year, they recruited Ian Pickering to help write lyrics for what would become Sneaker Pimps' debut album,
Becoming X. At their manager's suggestion, they saw
Kelli Ali (then known as Kelli Dayton) performing in a pub with her band The Lumieres, She soon joined the band, and the demos won the group a contract with
Virgin Records. Released in 1996,
Becoming X sold over one million copies. A "grueling" tour of the US strained relations within the band, and Howe left the tour prematurely. Due to other ongoing personality conflicts and the band's concern about being stereotyped as a faddish female-fronted trip-hop act, New songs were premiered during a 2001 European tour opening for
Placebo. In 2003, a fourth Sneaker Pimps album was demoed but shelved. The album, which started as the soundtrack for an abandoned indie film project called
Blind Michael, which included several songs from the
SP4 project. After some additional cancelled projects, in 2006 Howe and Corner recorded some new demo tracks with an unidentified female singer; the tracks turned up on a
MiniDisc found in a bar in Russia and are now commonly referred to as
SP5 demos. The tracks were leaked online and were later confirmed to be legitimate new Sneaker Pimps songs. After several years of side projects, Howe hinted in 2015 that Sneaker Pimps may reform. Corner confirmed the reunion in 2016, and as of early 2019 they were reportedly working on a new album. In May 2021, the band announced a new album entitled
Squaring the Circle. Five of the songs originate from the SP5 demos, "Lifeline" (originally "Samaritan"), "Child in the Dark" (originally "Satellite"), So Far Gone (originally "Sun Ate the Moon"), "Come Like the Cure" (originally "Elias") and "No Show" (originally "Rush"). ==Members==