The original group included Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah, Chris Wood, Johnny Kalsi, Martin Carthy, Paul Weller, Sheila Chandra, Simon Emmerson, The Copper Family, The Gloworms, Tiger Moth, Trans-Global Underground and Tunng. Their first performance was at Womad in 2007, and they have been touring regularly since, including a performance on Jools Holland in 2009.
In the 2008 Radio 2 Folk Awards they won Best Traditional Track (Cold Haily Rainy Night), and were the winners of three Hancock Awards in 2008: Best Album, Best Original Song (Cold Haily Rainy Night) and Best Traditional Song (Tam Lyn Retold).
With the release of their second album Empire & Love in 2010, the band has shrunk (a little), making less use of occasional headline artists and turning more into a real band, comprising, in the main: Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Chris Wood, Johnny Kalsi, Sheila Chandra, Simon Emmerson, Sheema Mukherjee, Ali Friend, Barney Morse Brown, Simon Richmond and Andy Gangadeen.
