Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl joined the grunge group Nirvana as its Drummer in 1990. During tours, he took a guitar with him and wrote songs. Grohl held back these songs from the rest of the band; he said in 1997, "I was in awe of [frontman Kurt Cobain's songs], and [I was] intimidated. I thought it was best that I kept my songs to myself." Grohl occasionally booked studio time to record demos and covers of songs he liked and even issued a cassette of some of those songs called Pocketwatch under the pseudonym "Late!" in 1992.

However, the demo tape circulated in the music industry, creating interest among record labels. Grohl formed a band to support the album. Initially, he talked to former Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic about joining the group, but both decided against it. "For Krist and I, it would have felt really natural and really great", Grohl explained. "But for everyone else, it would have been weird, and it would have left me in a really bad position. Then I really would have been under the microscope." Having heard about the disbanding of Seattle-based rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, Grohl drafted the group's bass player, Nate Mendel, and Drummer, william Goldsmith. Grohl asked Pat Smear, who served as a touring Guitarist for Nirvana after the release of its 1993 album, In Utero, to join as the group's second Guitarist. Grohl ultimately licensed the album to Capitol Records, releasing it on his new record label, Roswell Records.

Frontman Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, and Nirvana subsequently disbanded. Grohl received offers to work with various artists; press rumors indicated he might be joining Pearl Jam and he almost accepted a permanent position as Drummer in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Ultimately Grohl declined and instead entered Robert Lang Studios in October 1994 to record fifteen of the forty songs he had written. With the exception of a guitar part on "X-Static", played by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Dave Grohl played every instrument and sang every vocal on the tracks. "I was supposed to just join another band and be a Drummer the rest of my life," Grohl later said. "I thought that I would rather do what no one expected me to do. I enjoy writing music and I enjoy trying to sing, and there's nothing anyone can really do to discourage me." Grohl completed an album's worth of material in five days and handed out cassette copies of the sessions to his friends for feedback.

Foo Fighters made its live public debut on February 23, 1995, at the Jambalaya Club in Arcata, California and then March 3 at The Satyricon in Portland. They followed that with a show at the Velvet Elvis in Seattle on March 4. The show on March 3 had been part of a benefit gig to aid the finances of the investigation into the rape and murder of The Gits singer Mia Zapata. Grohl refused to do interviews or tour large venues to promote the album. Foo Fighters undertook its first major tour in the spring of 1995, opening for Mike Watt. The band's first single, "This Is a Call", was released in June 1995, and its debut album Foo Fighters was released the next month. "I'll Stick Around", "For All the Cows", and "Big Me" were released as subsequent singles. The band spent the following months on tour, including their first appearance at the Reading Festival in England in August.

After touring through the spring of 1996, Foo Fighters entered Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington, with Producer Gil Norton to record its second album. While Grohl once again wrote all the songs, the rest of the band collaborated on the arrangements. With the sessions nearly complete, Grohl took the rough mixes with him to Los Angeles, intending to finish up his vocal and guitar parts. While there, Grohl realized that he was not happy with how the mixes were turning out, and changed william Goldsmith's "drum tracks with his own for all but two songs." During the L.A. sessions, Grohl had played drums on the songs. Unhappy with Goldsmith's drumming, Grohl removed it from the recordings and re-recorded the drum tracks. As Goldsmith was about to come down to L.A. to find out why he wasn't being called upon to re-record his parts, he called Mendel from Seattle inquiring if he should make the trip. Grohl then called Goldsmith saying, "Dude, don't come down here, I'm recording some of the drum tracks". Shocked by this, Goldsmith met up with Mendel in Seattle and repeated Grohl's claim to be re-recording "some" of the tracks. Mendel asked, "Is that what he told you?"; Goldsmith affirmed it, and Mendel stated, "No, man, he did them all".

The members of Foo Fighters meld melodic elements with heavier ones. Grohl noted in 1997, "We all love music, whether it's the Beatles or Queen or punk rock. I think the lure of punk rock was the Energy and immediacy; the need to thrash stuff around. But at the same time, we're all suckers for a beautiful melody, you know? So it is just natural." Grohl said in 2005, "I love being in a rock band, but I don't know if I necessarily wanna be in an alternative rock band from the 1990s for the rest of my life." Grohl noted that the band's acoustic tour was an attempt to broaden the group's sound.

In 1998, Foo Fighters traveled to Grohl's home state of Virginia to write music for its third album. However, Grohl and Stahl were unable to co-operate as songwriters; Grohl told Kerrang! in 1999, "in those few weeks it just seemed like the three of us were moving in one direction and Franz wasn't". Grohl was distraught over the decision to fire Stahl, as the two had been friends since childhood. Shortly after that, Mendel called Grohl to say he was quitting the band to reunite with Sunny Day Real Estate, only to reverse his decision the next day. The remaining trio of Grohl, Mendel, and Hawkins spent the next several months recording the band's third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, in Grohl's Virginia home studio that he bought and built. The album spawned several singles, including "Learn to Fly", the band's first single to reach the US Billboard Hot 100. Other singles included "Stacked Actors", "Generator", "Next Year" and "Breakout".

Foo Fighters first received a Grammy Award for their music video for "Learn to Fly" in 2000, and they have won ten others. These include four Grammys in the Best Rock Album category for There Is Nothing Left to Lose, One by One, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace and Wasting Light, and three awards for Best Hard Rock Performance for the songs "All My Life", "The Pretender" and "White Limo". The band also received three Kerrang! Awards. At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, the band won Best Rock Video for "Walk". They won the Radio Contraband "Major Label Artist of the Year" in 2011 and 2014. The band won Song of the Year for "Something From Nothing" and Album of the Year for Sonic Highways both in 2014.

Near the end of 2001, the band reconvened to record its fourth album. After spending four months in a Los Angeles studio completing the album, the album "just didn't sound right" and the band had no confidence in the album to sell many records. With the album not reaching their expectations, and much infighting amongst the members, Grohl spent some time helping Queens of the Stone Age complete their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf. Once the Queens of the Stone Age album was finished, and touring had started for both Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, the band was on the verge of breaking up entirely as the animosity grew amongst the members. Grohl reconvened with Hawkins, Shiflett and Mendel to have them play at the Coachella Festival, with Queens of the Stone Age playing one day and Foo Fighters the following. After the Queens of the Stone Age played, Hawkins and Grohl talked about retrying the One by One album and had agreed to finishing it and seeing where they would go from there. The group went and re-recorded nearly all of the album (save "Tired of You") in a ten-day stretch at Grohl's home studio in Alexandria, Virginia. The original version of One by One, referred by the band as "Million Dollar Demos", has never been heard in its entirety, except for fragments that were leaked.

The final album was released in October 2002 under the title One by One. Singles from the album included "All My Life", "Times Like These", "Low", and "Have It All". The tour for the album included a headline performance at the 2002 Reading and Leeds Festivals.

For most of its history, the band chose to stay away from the political realm. However, in 2004, upon learning that George W. Bush's presidential campaign was using "Times Like These" at rallies, Grohl decided to lend his public support to John Kerry's campaign - "There’s no way of stopping the President playing your songs, so I went out and played it for John Kerry’s people instead, where I thought the message would kinda make more sense". Grohl attended several Kerry rallies and occasionally performed solo acoustic sets. The entire band eventually joined Grohl for a performance in Arizona coinciding with one of the presidential debates.

In November 2006, the band released their first ever live CD, Skin and Bones, featuring fifteen performances captured over a three-night stint in Los Angeles.

In October 2007, Foo Fighters started its world tour in support of Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. The band performed shows throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia, including headlining the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore on August 9. At the European MTV Music Awards in 2007 Pat Smear confirmed his return to the band.

On June 7, 2008, the band played Wembley Stadium, London and was joined by Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin to play "Rock and Roll" (with Grohl on drums and Hawkins on vocals) and "Ramble On" (sung by Grohl, drums by Hawkins). As Page and Jones left the stage before a final encore of "Best Of You", an ecstatic Grohl shouted "Welcome to the greatest fucking day of my whole entire life!". Throughout the tour for Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, Foo Fighters had been writing and practicing new songs at sound checks. After Foo Fighters had completed this tour in September 2008, they recorded 13 new songs in studio 606, shortly after announcing a hiatus from touring (which would last until January 2011). These sessions likely lasted from late 2008 - early 2009. While the members of Foo Fighters had initially planned for their new album (composed of songs from this recording session) to have come out in 2009 with almost no touring support, they ultimately decided to shelve most of the songs from these sessions. Three of these songs were later released - "Wheels" and "Word Forward" (which were directly placed on their greatest hits album), and a newly recorded version of "Rope" (which ended up making the final cut of "Wasting Light").

On November 3, 2009, the band released a compilation album, Greatest Hits, which features two new songs, "Word Forward" and the single "Wheels". These songs were recorded during a session which occurred between "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" and "Wasting Light" coming out. In order to promote their greatest hits album, Foo Fighters performed a show at studio 606 in October 2009 (which was broadcast online), during which the band took fan requests.

In August 2010, the band began recording their seventh studio album with Producer Butch Vig, who had previously produced the two new tracks for the band's Greatest Hits album. The album was recorded in Dave Grohl's garage using only analog equipment. The album won five Grammys and was nominated for six. The recording was analog to tape and used no computers, not even to mix or master. Vig said in an interview with MTV that the album was entirely analog until post-mastering. Pat Smear was present in many photos posted by Grohl on Twitter and a press release in December confirmed Smear played on every track on the album and was considered a core member of the band once again, having initially left as a full-time member in 1997 before returning as a touring Guitarist in 2006.

It was announced on September 28, 2011, that Foo Fighters would be performing during the closing ceremony of Blizzard Entertainment's annual video game convention, BlizzCon.

On February 12, 2012, the band performed at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards playing "Walk" along with the remix version of "Rope", featuring Deadmau5. The band was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Rock Performance, Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, Best Rock Song, Best Rock Album and Best Long Form Music Video (for Back and Forth). They won five out of the six, losing only to Adele in the Album of the Year category.

On September 6, 2013, Shiflett posted a photo to his Instagram account that indicates 13 songs are being recorded for the new album and later described the album in an interview as "pretty fucking fun". Rami Jaffee has recorded parts for three songs, one of which is entitled "In the Way". Butch Vig, who worked with the band on Wasting Light, confirmed via Twitter in late August 2013 that he is producing the album. The band confirmed that it would end its hiatus by playing two shows in Mexico City, Mexico, on December 11 and 13, 2013. On October 31, 2013, a video appeared on the official Foo Fighters YouTube channel showing a motorcyclist, later shown as actor Erik Estrada, delivering each of the band members an invitation to play in Mexico.

Foo Fighters have been described as alternative rock, post-grunge and hard rock. When Grohl first started the band, its music was often compared to that of his previous group, Nirvana. Grohl acknowledged that Nirvana singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain was a major influence on his songwriting. Grohl said, "Through Kurt, I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down". Foo Fighters also utilized the technique of shifting between quiet verses and loud choruses, which Grohl said was influenced by the members of Nirvana "liking The Knack, Bay City Rollers, Beatles, and ABBA as much as we liked Flipper and Black Flag, I suppose". Writing and recording songs for the first Foo Fighters album by himself, Grohl wrote the guitar riffs to be as rhythmic as possible. He approached the guitar in a similar manner to his playing a drumkit, assigning different drum parts to different strings on the instrument. This allowed him to piece together songs easily; he said, "I could hear the song in my head before it was finished." Once Grohl assembled a full band, his bandmates assisted in song arrangements. Pitchfork described Grohl and the band as "his generation's answer to Tom Petty—a consistent hit machine pumping out working-class rock".

On November 23, 2015, a surprise release following a month-long countdown clock on the Foo Fighters' website revealed the free EP Saint Cecilia, including a single of the same name. Alongside its release, Grohl also announced at the same time that the band would be entering an indefinite hiatus. In response to growing rumors of the band permanently breaking up, in March 2016, the band released a mockumentary video portraying Grohl leaving the band to pursue an electronic music career, and Nick Lachey (formerly of 98 Degrees) becoming the group's new singer, with the video ending "For the millionth time, we're not breaking up. And nobody's going fucking solo!" In May 2016, Shiflett stated that the band still had no particular plans for reforming, but assured that it would happen eventually.

Grohl announced that the band would spend much of 2017 recording their ninth studio album. On June 1, 2017 their new single "Run" was released. "Run" topped the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart the following month. With the new album release, the Foo Fighters also confirmed that touring keyboardist Rami Jaffee is officially the sixth member of the group. The Foo Fighters announced on June 20, 2017 that their new album, Concrete and Gold, would be released in September. On August 23, 2017, the band released their second single from Concrete and Gold named "The Sky Is a Neighborhood", which also topped the Mainstream Rock chart. "The Line" was also released in promotion of the album. Concrete and Gold was officially released on September 15, 2017 and was produced by Greg Kurstin. The album is noted as deriving influence from many rock bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles. Concrete and Gold also features Justin Timberlake, on the vocals for "Make It Right", Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men on backing vocals for the song "Concrete and Gold", and Paul McCartney on the drums for "Sunday Rain". The band began touring in June 2017, including headlining the Glastonbury Festival 2017.