James are an English rock band from Manchester, formed in 1982. They achieved popularity during the 1990s, with four top-10 hits on the UK Singles Chart and nine top-10 placings on the UK Albums Chart. The band's best-known singles include "Come Home", "Sit Down", "She's a Star" and "Laid".

Following the departure of lead singer Tim Booth in 2001, the band became inactive, but members reunited in January 2007 and have since released a further seven albums. Live performance has continually remained a central part of the band's output. As of 2010, the band had sold more than 25 million albums worldwide.

James were formed in 1982 in Whalley Range, Manchester, when Paul Gilbertson persuaded his friend Jim Glennie to buy a bass guitar and form a band with him. Their line-up solidified when Gavan Whelan joined on drums. They played a string of gigs under the names Venereal and the Diseases and Volume Distortion before settling on the name of Model Team International, then shortened to Model Team. They performed mostly improvised material derived from jam sessions, supporting the Fall at an early gig at Manchester Polytechnic. Vocalists and other musicians drifted rapidly in and out of their line-up until the band encountered Tim Booth at a student disco. Gilbertson invited him to the band's scout hut in Withington to join the band as a dancer; he was soon promoted to lead singer.

In August 1982, after a brief period under the name Tribal Outlook, the band renamed themselves James, after Glennie. As Glennie later said: "No one ever calls me James, so I don't associate it with my name in that respect. We couldn't use Tim because he's the singer and that would be weird. Our drummer was called Gavan, and we thought it sounded too 'heavy metal,' and the other one was Paul, so it was either James or Paul, so we went with James. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time we just thought, "Cool let's call the band 'James.'"

On 17 November 1982, on the recommendation of Mike Pickering, James played a gig at Manchester nightclub the Haçienda with New Order, the Durutti Column, Section 25 and others. The show was filmed and released on video in 1983 by Factory Records as "A Factory Outing", but during the editing process at Factory's offices, it caught the attention of Factory's co-founder, Tony Wilson. He offered James an album deal with Factory, but the band, by now a settled live act, were worried about tarnishing their material in the studio and settled instead for a three-track EP. Their debut release, the Jimone EP, was recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport, in August 1983 and released on Factory Records in September. It led to the band providing support for the Smiths between February and April 1985 on the Meat is Murder tour. The Smiths covered James's "What's The World" track during this tour.

Although they were now being touted as the "next big thing", several complex issues slowed their progress. Gilbertson's drug problems presented the band with no choice but to ask him to leave. Booth and Glennie had joined a sect named Lifewave that imposed many restrictions on their lifestyle and threatened the band's stability. The band's second EP, James II, was released over a year after the first and accompanied by a feature on the cover of the NME, Gilbertson having been replaced by the band's guitar tutor Larry Gott. The first two EPs would later be collected as Village Fire. Reviews were once again positive, and Factory were eager for James to record an album with it, but the band believed Factory were purely image-based and left the label, striking a deal with Sire Records.

Their third release, the Sit Down EP (no relation to the song of that name), came out in February 1986 and was followed by their debut album, Stutter, in July of that year. The album reached number 68 in the UK Albums Chart. Low on money and lacking coverage and promotion, the band recorded their second album, Strip-mine, attempting a more conventional song structure in an attempt to please Sire. The album almost went unreleased, but after a slight remix to sound more radio-friendly, Sire released it in September 1988, over a year after its initial completion. However the album only reached number 90. After finding a clause for ending their contract, the band left Sire.

James had by this point earned themselves a reputation as a live act and had built a solid fanbase. Sales of James T-shirts were particularly successful in Manchester even before they reached the Top 40. James financed the production of One Man Clapping, recorded live at Bath's Moles nightclub, with a bank loan from RBS and the help of Rough Trade Records. The album went to number 1 in the indie charts in 1989, reinvigorating media interest in the band.