His real name is Thomas Morgan Robertson. The son of a British archaeologist, he was born on October 14, 1958 in Cairo, Egypt. As a child, he traveled with his father to Mediterranean European countries, lived in Greece, Italy, France. After high school, he studied meteorology in college. From a young age, Thomas listened to a variety of music, but he was most interested in electronics, so he began to master various devices for sound processing quite early, and at the age of eighteen he began to design his own synthesizers. For his ardent love of technology, his friends gave Thomas the nickname Dolby, and he later made the word part of his stage name. He also learned to play piano and guitar, and left college in 1974 to devote himself entirely to music.
At one time he worked as a concert sound engineer for various independent British punk bands, including the cult Manchester band The Fall, and in 1979 he assembled his own lineup of the Camera Club, which among other musicians also included Jeff Downs and future famous producer Trevor Horne (later members of The Buggles and Yes). However, he soon left the band and joined the accompanying lineup of singer Lina Lovich, for which he composed the song "New Toy", which became one of the most famous in her repertoire. In 1981, Dolby made his debut as a solo artist, recording the single "Urges" on the independent label, after which he signed a contract with Parlophone, which released the second single of the young musician "Europa And The Pirate Twins", which, although it did not occupy a high place in the charts, but still attracted attention to him.
The following year, Tom's first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, was released. His music in those years represented an original fusion of synth-pop and funk, where synthesizers coexisted with traditional instruments. No less interesting were the lyrics of the songs, which bore the imprint of the author’s passion for science fiction and future technologies. The album was a modest success, although the song "Windpower" hit the thirty-first place in the UK. At the same time, Thomas continued to work as a session studio musician, collaborating with artists such as Joan Armatrading and Johnny Mitchell, Foreigner and Def Leppard. He also wrote and produced the hit song "Magic's Wand" for the American rap group Whodini. In 1983, he finally managed to make a big breakthrough with the song "She Blinded Me With Science", which became popular primarily in the United States, where it came in fifth place. In addition to Dolby's vocals, the song also featured the voice of eccentric scientist Magnus Pike, known for his performances on British television. On the wave of success, the debut album was re-released, which was also well received in America.
Released in February 1984, Dolby's second album "The Flat Field" became the greatest achievement of the musician in his homeland, taking the fourteenth place, and the accompanying single "Hyperactive!" became the seventeenth number in the British charts. In America, he received a much calmer reception: the album barely reached the thirty-fifth place. Dolby's compositions increasingly manifested elements of soul and funk music, even jazz, and the arrangements became more refined than before. After that, Dolby temporarily left his career as a pop singer, focusing on producing. During this period he worked with the famous American funk musician George Clinton, the singer of the rock ballad Johnny Mitchell and the English pop group Prefab Sprout. Periodically, Dolby returned to the profession of session musician, recorded with Japanese synthesizer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and also turned to writing music for movies. Among his most famous works in cinema are the music for the Ken Russell film Gothic and several songs included in the soundtrack to the fantastic comedy Howard Duck directed by Willard Hyke.
For some time, the musician tried to work under the pseudonym "Dolby's Cube", but the company "Dolby Labs" through legal proceedings forbade him to use the word Dolby in any form, except in combination with his name Thomas. In 1988, after a long hiatus, Dolby released his third album, Aliens Ate My Buick, quite diverse and eclectic, but generally focused on dance funk. Despite the fact that in the UK the album took the thirtieth place, the interest in his music was not the same as before, and overall it did not live up to expectations. In June of the same year, already moved to the United States, Dolby married American actress Kathleen Beller, known for the role of Kirby Colby in the television series Dynasty.
For several years, Thomas disappeared from the stage again, concentrating on working with other artists from Belinda Carlyle to Offra Haza, and returned only in 1992 with the album Astronauts & Heretics, released on his own label Giant. Recorded with the participation of famous rock musicians such as Eddie Van Hallen and Jerry Garcia, "Astronauts & Heretics" as a whole gave the impression of a more mature and solid work than the previous album and returned Dolby to the UK charts - the songs "Close But No Cigar" and "I Love You Goodbye" took 22 and 36 respectively, which did not save it from failure in the United States. In 1993, Thomas founded Headspace (now Beatnik Inc.), a company that develops software and creates polyphonic music files for computer games and mobile communications.
Dolby also continued to work in cinema - his song "The Mirror Song" was included in the soundtrack to the fantastic comedy "Toys" (1992, Barry Levinson) with the participation of Robin Williams, and the music to the computer animated film "The Gates of the Mind", where most of the compositions were designed in the style of techno, was released in 1994 as a separate album "The Gates To Mind's Eye" and caused the most favorable responses. Over time, Thomas practically left the music business, reminding himself of the release of the best collection “The Best Of Thomas Dolby: Retrospectacle” (1995), then the anniversary live album “Forty” (2002), recorded in 1998 at his fortieth anniversary. In 2006, he toured the United States.