Kevin Patrick Shields was born on 21 May 1963 in Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City, United States. He is the eldest of five siblings born to Irish parents; his mother was a nurse and his father was an executive in the food industry. Shields' parents had emigrated to the United States from Ireland in the 1950s, when the couple were teenagers. Shields attended Christ the King, a Roman Catholic primary school which he described as "a really horrible school run by psychopathic nuns".

In August 2007, reports emerged that My Bloody Valentine would reunite for the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, United States; this was later confirmed by Shields, along with the announcement that the band's third studio album (which he had begun recording in 1996) was near completion. In June 2008, My Bloody Valentine played two live rehearsals at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, their first public performances in 16 years. They began an extensive worldwide tour in summer 2008 (their first since their 1992 tour in support of Loveless) including appearances at Oyafestivalen in Oslo, Norway, Electric Picnic in Stradbally, Ireland, and the Fuji Rock Festival in Niigata, Japan. The band reportedly spent PS200,000 on equipment for their world tour.  In October 2011, Shields launched the independent record label Pickpocket together with Le Volume Courbe frontwoman Charlotte Marionneau, and considered releasing a collaborative "ten minutes of noise" single on the imprint. In May 2012 remastered versions of Isn't Anything and Loveless were released as well as the EP's 1988-1991 collection, which featured the band's Shields-remastered Creation Records extended plays, singles and unreleased tracks.  In November, Shields announced plans to release My Bloody Valentine's third album online before the end of the year, before announcing during a warm-up show at Electric Brixton in London on 27 January 2013 that the album "might be out in two or three days." The m b v album was eventually released through the band's official website on 2 February 2013, crashing the site on its launch due to high traffic. According to Metacritic, m b v received "universal acclaim", and the band began a worldwide tour upon its release.  Shields has since announced intentions to release remastered analogue cuts of My Bloody Valentine's back catalogue and a My Bloody Valentine EP "of all-new material", which will be followed by a fourth studio album.

How long have they been having them?