Composed of Stuart Adamson (formerly of The Skids, vocals / guitar / keyboards), Bruce Watson (guitar / mandolin / sitar / vocals), Tony Butler (bass guitar / vocals) and Mark Brzezicki (drums / percussion / vocals) though a variety of other drummers have been in the band throughout their long career, including Simon Phillips.

Prior to the recruitment of Butler and Brzezicki, an early incarnation of Big Country was a five-piece band and it featured Pete Wishart, later of Runrig and now an SNP MP, on keyboards. Although the band's music drew from Scottish traditional music, none of its members were born in Scotland. Adamson grew up in Dunfermline though, and as such, his trademark Scottish accent was genuine.

Formed initially as a five piece band in 1981, their first single was "Harvest Home", recorded and released in 1982. It was a modest success, reaching #91 on the UK Singles Chart. Their next single was 1983's "Fields of Fire", which reached the UK's Top Ten and was rapidly followed by the album The Crossing.

The album was a hit in the United States, powered by "In a Big Country", their only U.S. Top 40 hit single. The song featured heavily engineered guitar playing, strongly reminiscent of bagpipes; Adamson and fellow guitarist, Watson, achieved this through the use of the MXR Pitch Transposer 129 Guitar Effect.

Also contributing to the band's unique sound was their early virtuoso use of the e-bow, a device which allows a guitar to sound more like strings or synthesizer. The Crossing sold over a million copies in the UK and obtained gold record status (sales of over 500,000) in the U.S. The band also performed on both the Grammys and Saturday Night Live.

The band released the non-LP extended play single "Wonderland" in 1984 while undergoing a lengthy worldwide tour. The song, considered by some critics to be one of their finest, was a Top Ten hit (#8) in the UK singles chart but despite heavy airplay and a positive critical response, was a comparative flop in the U.S., only reaching #86 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the last single by the band to make a U.S. chart appearance.

Their second album Steeltown (1984) was a hit as soon as it was released, entering the UK Albums Chart at Number one. The album featured three UK Top 40 hit singles, and received considerable critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, but like Wonderland (and, in fact, all subsequent releases) it was a commercial disappointment in the U.S, peaking at #70 on the Billboard album charts.

Throughout 1984 and 1985, the band toured the UK, Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the U.S., both as headliners themselves and in support of such artists as Queen and Roger Daltrey. They also recorded prolifically, and provided the musical score to a Scottish independent film, 'Restless Natives' (1985), which was not released on CD until years later on the band's Restless Natives and Rarities (1998) collection.

1986's The Seer, the band's third album, was another big success in the UK, peaking at Number 2, and producing three additional Top 40 UK singles. These included "Look Away" which reached Number 7 (the band's highest charting UK single).

Kate Bush provided backing vocals on the title cut, and, as was the norm for the band at the time, the album received good reviews from the music press. In the U.S., the album sold modestly better than Steeltown, reaching #59 on the Billboard album charts.

This album showed the band's loyalty to Scottish Nationalist themes, with "The Seer" being about a woman who tells a traveller about the tyranny of William of Orange upon the Jacobites movement coming to an end soon; while "The Red Fox" was based on Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the so called Appin Murder of Colin Campbel, a Tory who was hated by many in Scotland around 1752.[citation needed]

In what some critics felt was an apparent attempt to regain their dwindling U.S. following, Big Country hooked up with producer Peter Wolf [6] for their next album, Peace in Our Time (1988), which was recorded in Los Angeles, California.

The result was very different from the previous singles and albums, and, in "Broken Heart (13 Valleys)" contained the song which Stuart Adamson claimed to be his favourite of all time. Despite this it was not well received by most critics and fans. One reviewer noted that it was the group's "least representative and least interesting album." It sold poorly.