Laibach formed in the small coal mining town Trbovlje in 1980, the same year as the death of Jugoslavija's long-time ruler Josip Broz Tito.
In 1982, they began performing around Slovenia, often under the radar of officials due to the controversial nature of their name - Laibach, which was the Germanicised name of Slovenia's capital city Ljubljana when the region was conquered by German-speaking nations throughout Slovenia's history. The name was also evocative of WWII collaborationists, which made them targets of derision from veteran Partisans.

They achieve much notoriety with their provocative performances, often promoted with simply the image of a Malevich cross instead of the forbidden name. One notable concert had a female member reading a letter from a Partisan group that condemned the band, followed by original frontman Tomaz Hostnik coming on stage in a Nazi uniform and quoting Mussolini. The cover of the live album Zagreb, Beograd, Ljubljana depicts Hostnik staring down the crowd with blood streaming down his chin from a hurled bottle. Despite his formative and aesthetic influence on the band, Hostnik soon departed and committed suicide by hanging from a kozalec - an ancient iconic Slovene hayrack, as depicted on the cover of the album Rekapitulacija.
A semi-official ban on their use of the name forced the band to seek outlets outside of Jugoslavija, which lead to wider exposure to a Western European audience and eventually America. When Laibach toured abroad in Europe, they declared the countries 'occupied'.

Laibach continued to achieve critical success, garnered a session with influential BBC DJ John Peel and deals with Wax Trax and Mute Records, the former of which continues to this day.
Paradoxically, it was the inclusion of Laibach videos on MTV's 120 Minutes program that probably gave most Americans their first exposure to their horrific sound and visuals. The videos for Opus Dei and Geburt Einer Nation, from the album Opus Dei, got airplay for more than a few subsequent weeks, as did the video for Sympathy for the Devil.

In 1984, Laibach joined forces with political painter collective Irwin under the umbrella of NSK (), along with the theater group Nasice Scipion Sisters (later named Red Pilot) and the graphic design department Nova Kollectiv.

In 1992, NSK declared itself a virtual state with no physical territories and began issuing passports at NSK events and Laibach performances.

Laibach continued to perform amidst the breakup of Jugoslavija, even giving a performance in war-torn Sarajevo, including issuing NSK passports to willing participants, who latter used them in the ensuing chaos to escape to safer territories.

Laibach has been the subject of many movies, the best of which are Predictions of Fire, Bravo: A Film from Slovenia and Victory Under the Sun. Mute/EMI are slowly releasing some of these on DVD. Two great books on the Laibach/NSK phenomenon  are Alexei Monroe's Interrogation Machine (MIT Press) and  NSK: Neue Slowenische Kunst/New Slovenian Art  (Amok Books).

Laibach continue to release albums sporadically and tour.

Despite an ever shifting lineup, they insist that Laibach has always been Dachauer, Eber, Keller and Saliger.