Kozelek was born in Massillon, Ohio on January 24, 1967. As a teenager, he led a band called God Forbid, but his musical career really began to take shape when he moved to Atlanta, Georgia and met fellow aspiring musician Anthony Koutsos. Kozelek and Koutsos formed the first edition of the Red House Painters, and before long they relocated to San Francisco, California in hopes of finding an audience. After the Red House Painters were championed by Mark Eitzel of American Music Club, whose dour but beautiful songs suggested the two songwriters were kindred spirits, the group scored a record deal with 4AD, and earned enthusiastic reviews and a loyal cult following for albums like Down Colorful Hill and Songs for a Blue Guitar. However, the Red House Painters' relationship with 4AD became strained, particularly after the label refused to release their album Old Ramon and Kozelek and his bandmates refused to change it.

With a two-year-old record sitting on the shelf unable to find release due to legal ramifications, Kozelek broke four years of recorded silence with the Rock 'n' Roll Singer EP. Released in 2000 under his own name, the half-hour disc featured interpretations of three Bon Scott-era AC/DC covers, a John Denver cover, and a couple new songs of his own. The EP seemed to divide longtime fans and critics into two camps. Some felt that the long period of no new material shouldn't have resulted in a batch of covers, while others were impressed with Kozelek's straight-faced reinterpretations that revealed a surprising amount of depth at the heart of AC/DC's songs. Kozelek also spent a fair amount of time during 1999 and 2000 arranging Take Me Home: A Tribute to John Denver and two benefit compilations for the Shanti Project, a San Francisco-based AIDS relief organization. He was also cast in the role of a bass player with a predilection for high-school females in Cameron Crowe's critically acclaimed Almost Famous, which hit theaters in 2000.

Meanwhile, Kozelek bought back the rights for the Red House Painters' unreleased record, Old Ramon. A full-length solo record, What's Next to the Moon, was released by Badman (the outlet for his previous EP and compilation involvements mentioned above) in early 2001. This time, the album consisted entirely of AC/DC renderings, featuring Kozelek's own arrangements and further polarizing fans and critics. Sub Pop eventually released Old Ramon a couple months after What's Next to the Moon, and they also offered White Christmas Live by the year's end. A Yuletide-inspired disc of live material recorded the previous year in Scandinavia, Sub Pop made it available through mail-order only. Little Drummer Boy Live arrived in winter 2006, followed in 2008 by Nights LP: 12 Songs by Mark Kozelek (Live & Rare Versions: 1996-2007) and The Finally LP, a collection of covers recorded for children's albums and tribute records that had since gone out of print. Kozelek issued a trio of live albums, On Tour, Live at Phoenix Public House Melbourne, and Like Rats, through his own Caldo Verde label in 2013. In that same remarkably busy year he also issued Perils from the Sea, a collaboration with Album Leaf multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle, and Mark Kozelek & Desertshore, a collection of new songs recorded with former Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon members.

The year 2014 saw another live release from Kozelek, Live at Biko, recorded during a performance in Milan, and also a new album of Yuletide music, Sings Christmas Carols. The fall of 2014 also found Kozelek engaging in a curious war of words in the music press and via social networking with Adam Granofsky of the War on Drugs, after Kozelek found himself playing a solo set at a festival while the War on Drugs were playing on another stage. The War on Drugs' stage volume led Kozelek to call the group's music "beer commercial lead-guitar shit," and for several weeks Kozelek and Granofsky tossed verbal volleys at one another, with Kozelek going so far as to write two songs about the semi-scandal that he posted online, "War on Drugs: Suck My C--k" and "Adam Granofsky Blues." After scoring a major critical success with Sun Kil Moon's sixth LP Benji, Kozelek followed up in 2015 with another release from that project, Universal Themes. Later that year he delivered a spoken word collaboration called Dreams of Childhood, on which Kozelek and Argentinian actor Nicolás Pauls read translations of poems by Argentinian street kids. It was announced that proceeds from the album would go to Argentinian nonprofit La Casa de la Cultura de la Calla, an organization dedicated to helping homeless children.

Capping off yet another prolific year, Kozelek delivered the eclectic solo EP Down in the Willow Garden, which featured two different renditions of a traditional Appalachian tune, a Led Zeppelin cover, and a reading from crime writer John Connolly's novel A Song of Shadows. In 2016, Kozelek released Jesu/Sun Kil Moon, his long-promised collaboration with Justin Broadrick, as well as Mark Kozelek Sings Favorites, a solo effort of straightforward piano-backed covers of songs by David Bowie, Waylon Jennings, Bob Seger, and others. ~ Andy Kellman