Four students, a trilogy and a world tour that grossed a billion

It began in September 1996, in the first week of term at University College London, when Chris Martin met Jonny Buckland. By early 1997 they were writing songs. Guy Berryman joined a few months later, and the trio recorded demos without a drummer under the name Big Fat Noises. Will Champion arrived in January 1998. The band tried out Starfish as a name, put out the EP Safety that year and signed to Parlophone in 1999.

Parachutes came in 2000 with “Yellow” as its breakthrough and picked up a Brit Award and a Grammy. A Rush of Blood to the Head in 2002 won the same two prizes. X&Y closed what the band saw as a trilogy, and then Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends took the Grammy for Best Rock Album. Its title track was the first song by a British act to hit number one in the US and the UK at the same time in the twenty-first century.

Afterwards the band kept widening the palette. Across Mylo Xyloto, Ghost Stories, A Head Full of Dreams, Everyday Life, Music of the Spheres and Moon Music, they drew on electronica, R&B, ambient, disco, funk, gospel and blues. “My Universe” became the first song by a British group to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and the Music of the Spheres tour became the first by a band to gross a billion dollars.

Numbers like those sit beside a more modest habit: the band give ten percent of their profits to charity. They have sold more than 170 million records, and they were the first group on Spotify to pass 100 million monthly listeners. Songs such as “Magic”, “Adventure of a Lifetime” and “Viva la Vida” show why, and even critics who find the band polarising tend to concede that they fill stadiums like nobody else.