Formed in East London in 2011, the band began performing at
DIY nights creating live improvisations by chopping up 1960s films before sequencing and augmenting them with synthesisers. The band released their first single, "True Ecology (Shit Everywhere)", in December 2012, on Ears Have Eyes records. Their next release came in early 2015 with "I Want My Minutes Back", issued on white label, and reissued in 2017 as their first release on
The Leaf Label. From 2015 to 2016, they performed in Daniel Oliver's participatory performance show 'Weird Seance'. In May 2017, they performed a live session on
Marc Riley's
BBC 6 Music show. The group's first release specifically for The Leaf Label, 12-inch
EP The Best Light Is The Last Light, was released in June 2017, with debut album
Come Play the Trees following that September.
Loud and Quiet describe the album as "hyperactive post-punk for the ailing state of the nation" and "bounding forward uncannily like
The Fall's recent work". In December 2017, Electronic Sounds placed the album at number 9 in their top 30 albums of the year and The Quietus at 14 in their list of 100. Snapped Ankles released
Violations, an EP of cover versions, for
Record Store Day 2018. It was released on limited edition vinyl and featured songs by
The Fugs,
Can,
Joey Beltram and
The Comateens. Their second album
Stunning Luxury was released on
The Leaf Label on 1 March 2019. Described as a "10-song
Gang of Four style takedown of modern capitalism" and "a stridently political album that loses neither its sense of humour nor its capacity for bangers", the album's themes and settings are based in the city and suburbs rather than the forests of 2017's
Come Play The Trees. The album's lyrics attacks gentrification and other aspects of modern city life.
The Quietus placed the album at #16 in their Albums Of The Year 2019. The band's first live album,
21 Metres to Hebden Bridge, was released in September 2020. Named after the distance between the pool table and stage at The Trades Club in
Hebden Bridge, where it was recorded in October 2019, the album was released for the delayed
Record Store Day 2020. Snapped Ankles' third studio album,
Forest Of Your Problems, was released on
The Leaf Label in July 2021. It was
Rough Trade's Album of the Month, and they described it as the group's "most spellbinding potion of woodwose krautrock to date" and a "bewitching and hypnotic incantation with swirling melodies, primal rhythm and feral funk that harks back to the feeling of possessed mania of Can or Joy Division."
Loud and Quiet gave the album 8/10 and described it as a "
Goat-meets-
The Fall soundworld that perfectly captures the group’s psychotic, eerie vision".
Hard Times Furious Dancing, the band's fifth studio album, was released on
The Leaf Label on 28th March 2025. ==Music, imagery and live performance==