McLaren persuaded guitarist Matthew Ashman, bassist Leigh Gorman and percussionist David Barbarossa (also known as Dave Barbe), of the then lineup of Adam & the Ants to leave Adam Ant and form a new group.

After a six-month long audition process, the band hired teen singer Annabella Lwin. Musician David Fishel, originally from Liverpool, an acquaintance of McLaren's, discovered 14-year-old Lwin while she was working a Saturday job at her local dry cleaning shop.

She was singing along to a Stevie Wonder song on the radio. The group's sound was a mix of her "girlish squeal," Balinese chants, surf instrumentals, New Romantic pop melodies, and Barbarossa's Burundi ritual music influenced tom tom drum beats.

Among the regular faces at the band's early London gigs were Latin songwriter/producer Richard Daniel Roman and Boy George, then known as Lieutenant Lush. McLaren was also going to use the latter (later of Culture Club fame) as a second lead singer, but he was deemed to be "too wild" for the band.

In 1982, Bow Wow Wow had their first U.K. top 10 hit with “Go Wild in the Country.” The band's most popular hit was the New Wave staple, "I Want Candy" (originally a 1965 hit by The Strangeloves). "I Want Candy" was featured in an early music video on MTV.

Bow Wow Wow's recording of "I Want Candy" continues to appear in film soundtracks and media and advertising events such as the 2005 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Their most notorious recording was "Sexy Eiffel Towers," a bold ode to masturbation, including excitedly heavy breathing and orgasmic moans; this was a song that went far beyond the slightly later Cyndi Lauper hit "She Bop", about similar subject matter.

The group released three full-length albums. In 1983, tensions in the group were rising. Suffering from illness and exhaustion after intense US touring, they went their separate ways.

Ashman went on to form Chiefs of Relief and play with other groups such as Max, Rams, and Agent Provocateur. In 1995, Ashman died from diabetes complications. Since his time in Bow Wow Wow, Barbe has worked on other musical projects such as Beats International, Live with Adam Ant in 1995, Republica, dance band Chicane, the London-based 'Faith' music collective, and Amber Gate.

Barbe also wrote a novel entitled “We Were Looking Up". Gorman continued to perform and has had success as a record producer and composer for films and advertising. After Bow Wow Wow, Lwin started a solo career.

In 1997, Lwin and Gorman reformed Bow Wow Wow and embarked on the "Barking Mad" reunion tour in 1997 and 1998, adding guitarist Dave Calhoun and drummer Eshan Khadaroo.

The tour produced the live CD Wild in the U.S.A., which also included remixes of previous Bow Wow Wow tracks. In the wake of the success of the "Barking Mad" tour, there were reports that the band planned to record new material.
“ The group wrote at least 10 new songs while on the road, including "Bedouin Rocker," "Eastern Promise" and the ballad "A Thousand Tears." Consequently, Bow Wow Wow hope to release an album of new material later this year. [The band's publicist] also said the band is planning to return to the U.S. for more dates, acting as support for a still-unnamed "major" artist. ”

The subsequent tour dates and records never materialized. The song 'A Thousand Tears' made it into the 1999 film Desperate but Not Serious starring Christine Taylor and Claudia Schiffer and this song along with some other previously unrecorded songs have been performed by Bow Wow Wow in recent concert dates, but presently, no new studio record has yet appeared.

It wasn't until a September 20, 2003 Inland Invasion show that was part of KROQ's 25th Anniversary celebrations that Bow Wow Wow reformed again and appeared on stage, this time with Los Angeles guitarist Phil Gough and Adrian Young of No Doubt on drums.

The band then maintained a touring schedule through 2006. In September 2005, Philadelphia, PA native Devin Beaman was brought in as the new drummer. In June 2006, Bow Wow Wow recorded a cover of The Smiths' song "I Started Something" for a proposed Smiths tribute record.

A promotional edit of the recording can be heard on Bow Wow Wow's MySpace page. The full-length recording, the first new recording released under the name Bow Wow Wow in over 20 years, was made available on iTunes on January 1, 2007.

Bow Wow Wow played their most recent show on November 2, 2006 at the Maritime Hotel's Hiro Lounge in New York City to promote the inclusion of their music on the soundtrack of the Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette. Since then, Bow Wow Wow has been on indefinite hiatus in order that the individual members can work on other projects.