Mark Hornby, Gary Bradford, and Martin Jenkins made up the Space Raiders, a big beat/electronica band which had a brief but nonetheless interesting and flashy role within the club music scene in Britain during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The trio teamed up in their native Middlesborough to form Space Raiders because they all had a mutual appreciation for dance music, although Jenkins tended to be more of a techno-leaning artist due to his previous group affiliations, and Bradford's background was house music. It's been rumored that the band's name came from a popular snack brand in England of the same name.

Space Raiders didn't exactly make a splashy earth landing when they started out. At first they played smaller clubs and arenas, made a couple of EPs and demo tapes and tried to build their reputation up on the strength of their goofy, funny live performances. 12-inch promos and CDs for singles like "Glam Raid," "Laid Back" and "(I Need The) Disko Doctor" came out before they eventually released their first full-length debut album, Don't Be Daft, in 1999.

Of course, for many critics the Space Raiders landed on a desolate moon of big beat electronica, with a fan base that had long since abandoned their home for other another dance music style. Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers, The Beta Band, Freestylers and others were fading fast in 1999, and it seemed to many that the Space Raiders were too fashionably late for the party. Others, though, have taken a second look at their music and have come away with a much more positive view, noting that their sound was fun and full of life, they merely suffered from bad commercial timing. In 2000 the Space Raiders returned to the studio and produced Hot Cakes under Skint Records.