Bill Laurance was born on April 2, 1981, and grew up in North London. He began on piano at William Tyndale primary school, played in the school band, and at nine performed on the organ at Union Chapel in Islington during a school trip, the same venue where he would record a live album as an adult. His early training was in ragtime and swing, and at fourteen he began playing jazz as the resident pianist at a small restaurant in Soho. He went on to the University of Leeds, where he studied classical composition and performance while exploring jazz, funk and drum'n'bass on the side.

The turn came in Leeds in the early 2000s. By his own account, a pick-up gig in the band of the singer Michael Solomon Williams put him next to a young Michael League, then a University of North Texas student passing through England. The two played a run of dates in the north of England and became friends, and when League went looking for a new pianist he invited Laurance to the United States to record the first Snarky Puppy album, The Only Constant (2006). Laurance is therefore an original member of the band, and his own biography describes him that way. Around the same period he played on records by the guitarist Eddie Roberts, among them Roughneck (Live in Paris) (2006) and the Eddie Roberts Quintet's Trenta (2007).

With Snarky Puppy he is credited on the albums from Bring Us the Bright (2008) onward: Tell Your Friends (2010), groundUP (2012), Family Dinner - Volume 1 (2013), We Like It Here (2014), Sylva (2015, with the Metropole Orkest), Family Dinner - Volume 2 and Culcha Vulcha (both 2016), Immigrance (2019), Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2020), Empire Central (2022) and Somni (2025, again with the Metropole Orkest, where the liner notes list him on Fender Rhodes Mark 8, Yamaha CP70 and Minimoog). The band has won five Grammy Awards, for "Something" with Lalah Hathaway (Best R&B Performance, 2014) and for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album with Sylva, Culcha Vulcha, Live at the Royal Albert Hall and Empire Central, and Laurance is in the credited lineup of each of those records. His keyboard colleagues in the group over the years have included Shaun Martin and Cory Henry.

His own records began in 2014 with Flint, which he produced with League and recorded with Searight on drums, followed by Swift (2015) and Aftersun (2016), all on GroundUP. At his October 2014 Ronnie Scott's show for Flint, a trio with League on bass and Robert "Sput" Searight on drums was joined by a string quartet and French horn from the Heritage Orchestra, and The Guardian's John Fordham praised the evening as bold, film-score-like music. Jazz FM named him its Breakthrough Act of the Year in 2015. Live at Union Chapel followed in 2016. In 2019 he launched his own label, Flint Music, alongside Cables, a concept album about technology on which he plays every instrument, co-produced and engineered by Nic Hard. In November 2018 he performed his own compositions with the WDR Big Band in Cologne and at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, in arrangements chiefly by Bob Mintzer, and the Cologne concert came out as Live at the Philharmonie, Cologne in 2019. He also released Live at Ronnie Scott's with his trio (2020), Cables Rewired (2021) with the Manchester string orchestra The Untold Orchestra, and Affinity (2022).

Film and orchestral work run alongside the records. He took part in the 2018 Sundance Institute Film Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Sound, scored the Cuban drama Un Traductor (2018), contributed to Initials S.G. (2019), and composed with Marcus Eaton for the documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019). Crosby, who passed away in January 2023, was a frequent collaborator: Laurance plays on two tracks of Lighthouse (2016), on Sky Trails (2017), and co-wrote and played piano on "Your Own Ride" from Here If You Listen (2018). His own biography also lists work for the dance companies Alvin Ailey, Ballet Rambert, Matthew Bourne's New Adventures, Phoenix Dance, Northern Ballet and English National Ballet.

Since 2023 his most visible projects have been on ACT Music, in a duo with League and on solo and orchestral records. Where You Wish You Were (January 27, 2023) and Keeping Company (October 31, 2024) pair his piano with League's oud, fretless bass and ngoni. Bloom (April 26, 2024), his ACT debut as a leader, set his writing for piano, Fender Rhodes Mk8, Osmose and Prophet 6 against The Untold Orchestra's 18 strings under the conductor Rory Storm. Lumen (September 26, 2025) is a solo piano record made over two days, April 3 and 4, 2025, in St Faith's Church in Dulwich, South London, after he decided to leave the synthesizers and drum machines behind for a more direct sound. A second League duo album, Close to Home, is listed for release on November 13, 2026, with the singles "Never Miss a Thing" and "Luray" already out. His own biography still lists him as an artist in residence at Morley College in London, and he continues to tour with Snarky Puppy and to give clinics at music schools.

Laurance's playing and writing sit where classical training meets club-and-studio music. His own biography describes a style that joins English classical, electronica and jazz-rock sensibilities to gritty contemporary grooves, and the records bear that out: Cables leans on processing and synthesis, Bloom is built for strings, and Lumen is about as bare as a piano record gets. The Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Moog and other synthesizers are as central to his sound as the acoustic piano, which is why he fits Snarky Puppy's funk-and-fusion keyboard section so naturally.

The jazz and the non-jazz sides are both plain in the work. Much of what he writes is closer to film music and cinematic piano-trio writing than to bebop, a quality The Guardian's 2014 review noticed when it likened his pieces to movie scores set on soul, funk and jazz grooves, and his film credits confirm the habit. The jazz credentials are just as concrete: two decades in one of the most awarded working jazz-fusion bands, a leader's catalogue that charted on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz and Jazz Albums lists (Aftersun reached No. 7 on the Contemporary Jazz chart), a Jazz FM Breakthrough Act award, and big-band work with the WDR Big Band in arrangements chiefly by Bob Mintzer. David Crosby praised him in a 2018 interview, and a 2025 All About Jazz review of Lumen called it his most personal album to date.