Listen to The Ting Tings on Batanga

De Martino met White whilst she was with TKO and again at Leeds University. A few months later while De Martino was in Manchester, the pair bumped into each other, and after De Martino relocated to Manchester went on to form the Portisheadinfluenced trio Dear Eskiimo who were signed to Mercury Records - but creative differences and the management style of the record label caused them to split.

This earlier experience left White and De Martino with a distrust of the music industry, so with that common interest they formed The Ting Tings. The name comes from the first name of a Chinese colleague of White at a shop who told her the name sounds like the pronunciation of "an old bandstand" in Mandarin.

The group has experienced much success in Japan. The band started out playing private parties at Islington Mill, Salford. The Mill gigs ended up as some of the most sought after tickets on the Manchester party scene - with various A&R reps and record producers, such as Rick Rubin, asking for tickets.

Their first double-A side single "That's Not My Name/Great DJ" was released on local label Switchflicker, and together with their second single "Fruit Machine", they were on heavy rotation in British radio (amongst others BBC 6 Music, played regularly by many DJs including a session for Marc Riley who was first to have them in session on 6 Music and first to play their record on the station). "Fruit Machine" was a limited-edition, 500-only seven-inch single on Legendre Starkie Records, which was only available at the group's gigs at Islington Mill in Salford, Electrowerkz in Islington, Berlin in Germany and at Glasslands in Brooklyn, New York City. They had a notable performance at Glastonbury Festival 2007, and after an October 2007 tour of universities in the UK with Reverend and the Makers, signed for Columbia Records.

Although during their performances Jules mostly stays sitting at his drumkit, only occasionally playing a guitar, Katie plays a variety of instruments (for example, keyboard, guitars and drums) as well as moving and dancing around the whole stage, which makes for a very dynamic performance.

In January 2008 they were voted third in the annual BBC 6 Music poll of industry experts Sound of 2008, for acts to emerge in the coming year. In February 2008 they were the opening slot act on the 2008 Shockwaves NME Awards Tour, performing with The Cribs, Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong and Does It Offend You, Yeah?. In conjunction with the NME and HMV the band contributed a demo version of "Great DJ" to a limited, 5000 copies only 10" vinyl release of all the artists on the NME Awards Tour.

The first single released on Columbia was "Great DJ", which received considerable airplay on BBC Radio 1 and Xfm in the UK; and hyped by magazines such as the NME. The single "Shut Up and Let Me Go" appeared in an iPod commercial in late April 2008, peaking at #55 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The band's debut album, We Started Nothing, was released on 19 May 2008. Their singles "Shut Up and Let Me Go" and "We Started Nothing" were featured in the Gossip Girl series, while the song "Be the One" was featured in One Tree Hill. Their single "Great DJ" was featured in the theatrical trailers for the Anna Fariscomedy "The House Bunny" and the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire".