Lloyd Cole and the Commotions were a popular British pop music band of the mid-1980s, based in Glasgow, Scotland. Derek MacKillop, manager, was listed an official group member on the group's three LPs. However, MacKillop did not feature in any group photographs, nor did he play on any albums.

Formed in 1982 and signed to Polydor in 1984, the band was known for combining Clark's encyclopedic, yet often twangy, guitar savvy with Cole's low-key singing style. Their auspicious debut effort Rattlesnakes (1984) was initially dismissed as a "student bedsit classic", but now is regularly cited as one of the important works in rock music (and is much revered as a student bedsit classic...).

NME included in its top 100 album of all times list and the title track was also covered by Tori Amos. Manic Street Preachers included Rattlesnakes amongst their top ten albums of all times.

Paul Hardiman gave Rattlesnakes a clean and elegant production, and Anne Dudley (who had scored The Lexicon of Love for ABC) was brought in to provide the album's much-noted orchestrations. The album was scored with a keen desire to keep it elegant and avoid "schmaltz", and string arrangements began coming back into rock music in the years following its release.

Due to insistence by their label, the follow-up, Easy Pieces, was produced by the Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley production team (who had shaped efforts by Madness and Teardrop Explodes and were hot off working with Elvis Costello and the Attractions on Punch the Clock) "Clanger" as they would become known, applied their established '80s britpop sound to the Easy Pieces recordings, making for a dramatic contrast between the two works.

It contained their biggest commercial success, the single "Lost Weekend", which made #17 in the UK charts. The swansong of the Commotions, somewhat provocatively titled Mainstream was produced by the group and Ian Stanley, keyboard-player of Tears for Fears.

Particularly notable were Cole's knowingly pretentious lyrics (he was studying Philosophy at the University of Glasgow when the band started) and namedropping the likes of Norman Mailer, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Lee, Grace Kelly, Truman Capote, Simone de Beauvoir, Nancy Sinatra, and Eva Marie Saint as well as referring to Sean Penn (somewhat sympathetically) as "Mr. Madonna".

For a period in the mid-1980s, The Commotions were one of the most successful indie acts in Britain (despite being on a major label, Polydor), vying with The Smiths. The band broke up in 1989 amid reports of personality clashes between members. The band reformed in 2004 to perform a 20th anniversary mini-tour of the UK and Ireland.