Bastille, commonly stylised as ‘BΔSTILLE’, is a British indie pop band. It was created by Dan Smith in 2010 and later were joined by Kyle Simmons, bassist and guitarist Will Farquarson and drummer Chris “Woody” Wood. The band is named after the fact that birthday of Dan Smith occurs on Bastille Day, i.e., 14th July.

Their first release was a limited single in 2010 under the label Young & Lost Club, and the Laura Palmer EP in 2011. The band was signed to Virgin Records later the same year.

Following their signing, the band released two mix-tapes – Other People’s Heartache and Other People’s Heartache Pt. 2 — for free. These mixtapes were self-published as it included a lot of copyrighted work ranging from various compositions to segments from movies in their composition. In an interview with The Guardian, Dan Smith discussed the mixtapes:

Someone recently said to us: ‘The mixtapes were very clever, was that the label’s idea?’ Actually the label were completely against it; we were stealing and sampling illegally left, right and centre. The label said: ‘We want nothing to do with this.’ When it came to hosting the mixtapes, I had to register the website myself."

Preceding the release of their debut album, Bad Blood, the band released several singles — “Overjoyed”, “Bad Blood” and “Flaws”— to moderate commercial success. In February 2013, the band was catapulted into the charts by the album’s fourth single, “Pompeii”. The song was a commercial hit, going up to 5x Platinum around the world. In June 2014, “Pompeii” was confirmed to be the United Kingdom’s most streamed song ever. Unfortunately, it has since been overtaken.

Bastille also released a limited vinyl containing all the singles released titled ‘The Singles Club', in 2012, which contained all the singles and their B-Sides tracks. Bad Blood was released in March 2013 and reissued as All This Bad Blood in November that year to include bonus tracks and the Other People’s Heartache mixtapes. In August 2020, All This Bad Blood was released as a limited 2LP Vinyl. The 10th anniversary edition of Bad Blood was released on Bastille Day of 2023, which contained extra demos, live variants and orchestral rendition of Pompeii titled ’Pompeii MMXXIII‘, which featured Hans Zimmer. Its release coincided with 10th anniversary of Pompeii’s single release.

On 21st October 2014, the third mixtape, VS. (Other People’s Heartache Pt. III) was announced with the release of ‘Torn Apart’. The band released the mixtape in December of the same year. The mixtape was re-released in 17th July 2021 as a limited vinyl with only 2000 copies for Record Store Day. They were nominated for Best New Artist at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, but lost out to Sam Smith in 2014.

In 2015, they also recruited a touring member, Charlie Barnes. In the same year, they also released a non-album single, Hangin', which also featured in FIFA 16 by American Publisher Electronic Arts. Furthermore, in their Facebook page, they shared that the album would come in 2016 and also revealed two tracks that they were working on titled ‘Grip’ and ‘Snakes’.

In June 2016, they uploaded a trailer featuring, then, unreleased song titled ‘Two Evils’ and they also revealed the title of the album to be called ‘Wild World’. Then two weeks later, the first single from the album was released. In September 2016, the album was released. A week after the release, the album had reached the top of UK and Scottish charts and stayed there for two weeks. The album also won the ‘Best Album’ award at 2017 NME Awards. The band later released a new non-album single titled ‘Comfort of Strangers' for RSD. In November 2017, Bastille featured in a Craig David song ’I Know You. Continuing the trend set by ‘The Singles Club’ released in 2012, in July 2017, the band released limited vinyl by the same title for the singles released in the album. This vinyl also included a live variant of the songs, except for Vinyl variant of ‘Send Them Off’, which contained a new and vinyl exclusive song called ‘The Descent.

In May 2018, they released the first single ‘Quarter Past Midnight’ which aired on BBC Radio 1 for debut. Then, the band collabed with Marshmello and released ‘Happier’, which appeared on Billboard Hot 100 in February 2019. Band also released another EDM collab with Seeb for their song ‘Grip’. A release of fourth mixtape was followed by this song’s release. The last track of this mixtape also featured a snippet from an unreleased song titled ‘Million Pieces’. On April 2019, the titular song was released. This was followed by the release of ‘Joy’ and then, ‘Those Nights’. In 14th June 2019 the band has released their 3rd studio album ‘Doom Days’, which was described by Dan as an “apocalyptic party album.” An extended version of the album was then released in 11th December 2019, containing 11 new tracks. In March 2020, continuing the tradition, the band released the limited ‘Singles Club’ vinyl containing singles from Doom Days. The B-side of the vinyls contained the ‘One-Eyed Jack Sessions’ for the said songs.

In 2020, the world was hit with COVID-19 pandemic and the band was one of the 23 artists who were featured to make a cover of a Foo Fighters song ‘Times Like These’ to raise funds for the pandemic. The song was released on 23 April 2020, and 8 days later, became the band’s third UK #1 single. In July 2020, the band released ‘What You Gonna Do???’ with Graham Coxon of Blur. Then in September 2020, another single titled ‘survivin'’ was premiered on Apple Music’s Zane Lowe Show. Then, the final single of the year was accompanied by release of the EP by the same title. Another EP titled ‘Roots of ReOrchestrated’ was released a month later which contained orchestral versions of their songs.

In June 2021, the first single from their upcoming album was released. The promotion of their new project started with ominous messaging about a future technological company called Future Inc. At the next month on Bastille Day, ‘Give Me The Future’ was released and the album with the same title was announced. The album revolved itself around technological themes. Next month, another single titled ‘Thelma + Louise’ was released. In October, fourth single ‘No Bad Days’ and the album release date was set to be on 4th February 2022. This was also their first album which ditched their common design of appearing like a movie poster. Final single ‘Shut Off The Lights’ was released. This album became band’s third UK #1 album. The extended version of this album was released on 26th August of the same year. The extended version contained 14 new songs and also included fifth part of Other People’s Heartache. This was also the first album by the band which released no ‘Singles Club’ vinyl release.

In 2024, the band announced a project titled ‘&’ which was released in four parts. The album contains songs about the people in history that Dan admires and finds interesting. The album release was accompanied by a 14 episode podcast called Muses, “An Ampersand Podcast” with Dr. Emma Nagouse