During the first years, their music was primarily blues-oriented Hard Rock. Members of the band include Jon Lord and Ian Paice of Deep Purple as well as Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody.
After a major personnel shift, Whitesnake released 1984's Slide It In, a platinum album. The following album, Whitesnake, was another huge success, driven by the power ballad "Is This Love".
The band was reformed again for Slip of the Tongue (1989), which featured Steve Vai; the record did not sell well in spite of that. 1990 saw a Greatest Hits album, but other than that the band was dormant until 1997. In that year, an album called Restless Heart was released, though not in the United States. Since then Whitesnake has only released an unplugged Japan show Starkers In Tokyo.