Teenage Fanclub emerged from the Glasgow
C86 scene. They formed following the break-up of the Boy Hairdressers, a band featuring Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake and Francis MacDonald. Following a brief period in which Blake was a member of
BMX Bandits, the three former bandmates joined with Gerard Love to form Teenage Fanclub. and because they wanted to involve O'Hare in the album. The band followed the album with the EP ''
God Knows It's True before being signed by Creation Records. The King'', their next album, was a semi-improvised collection recorded in a single day. beating
Nirvana's
Nevermind, their Creation stablemates
My Bloody Valentine's album
Loveless, and
R.E.M.'s
Out of Time. Their followup album, 1993's self-produced
Thirteen, received mixed reviews on release, although it has since seen some critical reappraisal. Some reviews criticised the record for a perceived failure to develop the band's sound, despite experiments in instrumentation (strings and flute on single "Hang On", mandolin on "120 Mins"), while some tracks — like "Norman 3", another of the singles pulled from the album — feature lengthy outros that some critics deemed overly repetitive. However, lead single "Radio" did chart at #31 in the UK, matching the position achieved by What You Do to Me. After touring
Thirteen, Teenage Fanclub parted ways with Brendan O'Hare, citing "musical differences". His replacement was Paul Quinn, formerly of the
Soup Dragons.
Songs from Northern Britain followed
Grand Prix and built on the former's success. It became their highest-charting release in the UK and contained their biggest hit single to date, "
Ain't That Enough". Quinn went on to form
the Primary 5. In 2002, they released
Words of Wisdom and Hope with
Jad Fair of
Half Japanese. Their final release on a
Sony label,
Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds – A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub, collected the band's best songs along with three new songs (one from each member). Their next album,
Man-Made, was released on 2 May 2005, on the band's own
PeMa label.
Man-Made was recorded in
Chicago in 2004, and produced by
John McEntire of
Tortoise. In 2006, the band held two special concerts (in
London and Glasgow) playing their 1991 album
Bandwagonesque in its entirety. The band began work on their ninth album in August 2008, booking an initial three weeks at Leeders Farm
recording studio in
Norfolk. The album was called
Shadows, the first to involve keyboardist Dave McGowan as a full-time member, and was released on the band's own
PeMa label. It became available in Europe, Australasia and Japan on 31 May 2010, and was released by
Merge Records in North America on 8 June 2010. In May 2015, Teenage Fanclub supported the
Foo Fighters at a concert at
Old Trafford Cricket Ground. Their tenth album,
Here, was released on 9 September 2016. The story of Teenage Fanclub's early days features in the 2017 documentary
Teenage Superstars. In August 2018, the band issued new versions of their five
Creation Records era albums which had been remastered at
Abbey Road Studios. To celebrate the reissues, the band also announced Songs from Teenage Fanclub: The Creation Records Years, a four-city UK tour during late October to mid-November in which they would play three nights each in Glasgow,
Manchester,
Birmingham and London, with each night's setlist covering different periods of the Creation-era discography, and featuring former drummers Brendan O'Hare and Paul Quinn participating, in which both drummers would respectively perform the albums and B-sides they had originally recorded. These gigs would be Gerard Love's last with the group, After Love's departure,
Euros Childs joined the band on keyboards and vocals, with Dave McGowan switching over to bass and vocals. However, the tour was rescheduled for April and May 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, and the album's release date would eventually be set for 5 March 2021. The album release date and tour would end up being rescheduled once again, with
Endless Arcade coming out on 30 April 2021 and the tour dates postponed to September 2021 and April and May 2022. On 23 May 2023, Teenage Fanclub announced the September release of their twelfth album,
Nothing Lasts Forever. ==Other projects==