The Feeling consist of Dan Gillespie Sells (lead vocals and guitar), bassist Richard Jones, guitarist Kevin Jeremiah, Ciaran Jeremiah (keyboards) and drummer Paul Stewart. Gillespie Sells and Jones met as music students at the BRIT School in Croydon, Surrey in 1995, as members of one of the school's bands, Horn, and the Jeremiahs and Stewart, all from Horsham, Surrey, were in a band called Superfly. After crossing paths around 2003, the qunitet decided to form a band, The Feeling, a moniker which comes from a neon sign seen on a bar in Paris.

The group spent a lot of time in the Alps before their debut playing live gigs (it was revealed in a podcast for The Times that the band had blagged their way into this, saying they could perform 50 songs when in fact they only knew 6) and selling demo CDs. Their last gigs in the Alps were in the winter of 2004/2005. In 2005, the band received their first UK radio airplay, when Jeff Cooper played their first demo on radio2XS, and in June the following year, The Feeling released their debut album, “Twelve Stops and Home”. To celebrate the release, the band's record company, Island Records, took 120 British music journalists on the Eurostar to Paris for the day, where the band performed live in a restaurant (in recognition of the origin of the band’s name). The album reached number 2 on the UK Album chart. First single "Sewn" climbed to number 7 on the UK Singles chart, second single "Fill My Little World" charted at number 10, and "Never Be Lonely" became their third UK Top 10 hit when it peaked at number 9. “Twelve Stops and Home” debuted in the US Heatseekers chart at number 20, and has sold over 1.5 million sales worldwide. In January 2007, it was announced that The Feeling were the number 1 most played band on UK radio in 2006, with their four singles receiving a total of 97,436 plays, meaning that, on average, a song by The Feeling was played 267 times every day, or once every 5 minutes.

Second album, “Join With Us”, the majority of which was recorded at Bradley House, a stately home in Maiden Bradley near Warminster, Wiltshire (home of the Duke of Somerset), and mixed in Los Angeles, was released in February 2008. First single, “I Thought It Was Over” entered the UK charts at number 12 on downloads alone, climbing to number 9 the following week. The album reached number 1 on the UK Album charts, and has sold over 200,000 copies.