The Black Dog were formed in 1989 by Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner. Unable to find a label to back their initial releases, they issued early EPs on their own Black Dog Productions imprint. During this period, Downie operated an early electronic bulletin board entitled Black Dog Towers.

They signed to Warp in 1993 and issued the album Bytes under the group name Black Dog Productions, which compiled various alter-egos and side-projects. The debut album as The Black Dog, Temple Of Transparent Balls came out on the GPR label, followed by Spanners on Warp in 1995.

In 1995, Handley and Turner departed to work on their spin-off project Plaid. They had originally met at school in the early 1980s, bonding over their shared love of hip-hop and forming a breakdancing crew in rural Suffolk. After leaving school they moved to London, where Andy DJed on pirate radio station Crush FM, and Ed began putting hip-hop tracks together with an early sampler. In 1988 Ed responded to Ken Downie's ad in Music Week looking for collaborators to make acid house music, an endeavour to which Andy was subsequently invited to join. Concurrently with their work with Downie as The Black Dog, Ed and Andy made music as a duo and released it under the Plaid name. Since focusing on Plaid full-time they have undertaken production work for other artists (such as Nicolette), recorded a number of soundtracks (including cult anime film Tekkonkinkreet), toured extensively, and released eleven albums for Warp, the most recent of which, Feorm Falorx, came out in 2022.

Downie continued recording under the name The Black Dog (including a further album for Warp - Music For Adverts (And Short Films)) and completing a number of remixes in collaboration with Steve 'Hotdog' Ash and Ross Knight. Richard and Martin Dust teamed up with Ken Downie in 2001, and the line-up has remained this trio since that time, maintaining a prolific output of EPs and albums, mainly on the Dust Science label. The band's early EPs were collected on the 2007 compilation Book of Dogma, and the latest album by The Black Dog, The Grey Album, was released in May 2023.