In what year was Radiohead formed?

Radiohead was formed in 1985. The band began at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, England, where Thom Yorke, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Philip Selway, and Jonny Greenwood came together as a group called On a Friday.

The original name referred to the day on which the students usually rehearsed in the school’s music room. The members continued playing together even after some left for university, maintaining the band through rehearsals during weekends and holidays. Their early formation therefore dates to 1985, even though their commercial breakthrough came several years later.

A frequent source of confusion is the date 1991, when the group signed with EMI and changed its name from On a Friday to Radiohead. That is an important milestone, but it is not the year the band formed. Their debut single, “Creep,” followed in 1992, and their first album, Pablo Honey, was released in 1993.

The name Radiohead came from the 1985 Talking Heads song “Radio Head,” which appeared on the album True Stories. The renamed band went on to become one of the most influential alternative-rock groups of the 1990s and 2000s.