Chris Anderton (guitars), Tony Ashworth (drums), Chris Shea (vocals), and Paul Swindles (bass) met each other in school and started playing gigs with a clutch of Buzzcocks and Clash songs in their repertoire. Within a year, they started writing their own material and decided to change their name to Tunnelvision.

After writing a few songs, Shea exited, leaving Anderton to take over on vocals. Eventually enlisting Andrew Leeming to take over on guitar, a gig with their friends, Section 25, in September of 1980 impressed Factory bigwigs Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson. Agreeing to release a single on their label, the band set about recording a four-song demo before cutting their official debut release. (Just after recording it, Swindles left for a proper job. He was replaced by Ian Butterworth.) Infamous producer and Factory associate Martin Hannett remixed two of the demo's songs, which became Tunnelvision's lone single, Watching the Hydroplanes. As with most post-Joy Division records issued in the early '80s by Factory, the single was cast off as being second-rate Joy Division.

Yet another four-song demo was recorded before Leeming departed. Drummer Ashworth ditched his drum kit for a guitar, and the trio continued playing live dates with a drum machine. Opting to try things out with another live drummer, the band called it quits after one rehearsal as a quartet. Former members splintered off into other short-lived bands, including Vee VV (Anderton, Butterworth) and Cat Noise (Shea, Swindles). In 1998, Les Temps Modernes released Guessing the Way, a compilation of the band's single, two demos, and live material. ~ Andy Kellman