Gutt's family resided in St. Clair County, located in southeast Michigan, throughout most of his childhood years. He attended schools in both Algonac and Marine City, graduating from Marine City High School in 1994.

After parting ways with Dry Cell in 2004, Gutt recorded 8 demo songs with a band named Acrylic.

In 2005 (when Dry Cell went on hiatus) Gutt and his friend, Guitarist Gary Pittel formed Band With No Name (abbreviated as BWNN). The band also included Aaron Hutchinson (drums), Justin “Antic” Hackman (keyboards), Mike Guy and later Ben Lula (bass). In 2007 BWNN released a 5-track self-titled EP. In 2008 they won 89X & TNTs Battle Of The Bands in Michigan and received $10,000 and studio time to record a new EP. 7 new songs were recorded and a full-length album named Humanity was released in 2009. In 2013 it was re-released under Gutt's name on iTunes and included the song "Stay", which was previously known as the album's B-side.

In early 2010 a compilation The Dry Cell Collection was released. It contains previously released demos from 2003, 2005 and 2008, b-sides from Disconnected and one previously unreleased song, "So Alive". The band had no news on their MySpace page since 2010. In 2012, it was said on Gutt's official website that Dry Cell is now defunct.

In 2012, Gutt auditioned for the second season of the American singing competition series The X Factor. In an episode broadcast on September 20, 2012, Gutt sang "Hallelujah", a cover of Leonard Cohen getting unanimous four "yes"es from the judges Simon Cowell, Britney Spears, Demi Lovato and L.A. Reid. But he couldn't make it past the "bootcamp" stage and was eliminated before the live shows. Several weeks later, Cowell stated to Access Hollywood that one regret he had was sending Gutt home early.

In 2013, he returned once again with the third season of the competition. He auditioned with the song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from Aerosmith. After the judges objected, he was offered a second song, "Creep" from Radiohead. Based on that performance, he was put in the Final 40, and one of ten finalists in the "Over 25" category mentored by Kelly Rowland.

In December, 2014, Gutt released "A Detroit Christmas" as a solo Artist.

In late 2015, Rival City Heights toured the Middle East (Jordan,Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon) and India for a series of concerts in association with the Princess Alia Foundation.

On November 16, 2016, Entertainment Tonight reported that Stone Temple Pilots had recruited Gutt to be their new lead singer, replacing Chester Bennington, who had left the band one year earlier. The following day, however, a representative for the band denied this rumor, saying that "the band has been rehearsing with several Singers over the past few weeks" and "they haven't made a decision yet." A year later on November 14, 2017 Stone Temple Pilots officially announced Gutt as their new lead singer, and played their first concert with him that same night at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Gutt's first single with the band is "Meadow." Founding member Dean DeLeo said: “We wanted someone who would not only do our earlier songs justice, but would also write new songs and carve out a different path forward with us. It took some time, but we found our guy."