David M. Torn was born on May 26, 1953, in Amityville, New York. He has said that hearing Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s changed the course of his life. He studied privately with the guitarists John Abercrombie and Pat Martino, with Paul Weiss and with Arthur Basile, and took part in Leonard Bernstein's young-composers series with the New York Symphony. In the 1970s he played in experimental and jam bands, among them the Ithaca group Zobo Funn Band, and came under the influence of jazz fusion.

After moving to Manhattan he co-founded the Everyman Band with the saxophonist Marty Fogel, the bassist Bruce Yaw and the drummer Michael Suchorsky. The group toured with Don Cherry and Lou Reed and made two albums for ECM, Everyman Band (recorded in Oslo in March 1982) and Without Warning (recorded at Bearsville Studios in New York in December 1984). Between them came his first solo-billed ECM record, Best Laid Plans (recorded in Oslo in July 1984 and released in 1985), a guitar and percussion duo with Geoffrey Gordon in which AllMusic hears early loop techniques influenced by Robert Fripp. He then won a place in Jan Garbarek's group, touring with it in the mid-1980s and playing on It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice (1985), a quartet date that also features the bassist Eberhard Weber and the drummer Michael DiPasqua.

His second ECM album as leader, Cloud About Mercury, was recorded in London in March 1986 and released in 1987, with the trumpeter Mark Isham, the bassist Tony Levin and the drummer Bill Bruford. The bass chair had first been given to Mick Karn, who fell ill and was replaced by Levin; Karn took over from Levin on Torn's subsequent tour dates. AllMusic's reviewer called the record one of the finest jazz fusion dates of the 1980s. Torn also played on David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive (1987), where he met Karn, and on Isham's Castalia (1988), then left ECM for Windham Hill, which issued Door X (1990), a set of songs that includes a Jimi Hendrix cover.

In the early 1990s he was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a life-threatening brain tumor, and the surgery that followed left him deaf in his right ear. He returned to recording with Polytown (1994), a trio album with Karn and the drummer Terry Bozzio made in June and July 1993. Albums for the German label CMP followed: Tripping Over God (1995), a home recording built on loops in which his son, the electronic musician Elijah B. Torn, plays on one track, and What Means Solid, Traveller? (1996), with Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums. In 1998 he joined Bruford, Levin and the trumpeter Chris Botti in the quartet Bruford Levin Upper Extremities, and made Gtr Oblq with the guitarists Vernon Reid and Elliott Sharp. Under the name Splattercell he issued two electronic albums in 2000, Oah and a companion remix set.

From the late 1990s he was equally busy as a session guitarist, producer and film composer. AllMusic counts ten film scores between 1996 and 1999 on which he appears, including Velvet Goldmine and The Big Lebowski, and he played on records by Ryuichi Sakamoto (Discord, 1997), Meshell Ndegeocello (Bitter, 1999) and k.d. lang. He recorded with David Bowie on Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003), returned for The Next Day (2013), and contributed to Tori Amos's Scarlet's Walk (2002). His own scoring includes The Order (2003) and Lars and the Real Girl (2007), and his composer credits also include Friday Night Lights. Alongside this ran a long run of production and mixing work for jazz musicians, above all for the alto saxophonist Tim Berne (The Shell Game, Science Friction, The Sevens, Big Satan's Souls Saved Hear and several Snakeoil albums), and also for Dave Douglas (Keystone), Drew Gress and Kaki King.

Prezens, recorded in March 2005 at Clubhouse Studios in Rhinebeck, New York, and released by ECM on April 24, 2007, brought him back to the label as a leader with a quartet of Berne, the pianist Craig Taborn and the drummer Tom Rainey, plus Matt Chamberlain on one track. AllMusic reports that it reached number 34 on the Jazz Albums chart. In 2013 he gave a solo guitar performance and talk at TEDx Caltech about his diagnosis and recovery. Only Sky (ECM, 2015), recorded in February 2014 at EMPAC in Troy, New York, and at his own Cell Labs studio, is a solo set for guitar, electric oud and live looping. Sun of Goldfinger (ECM, 2019), a trio with Berne and the drummer Ches Smith recorded in September 2015 and August 2018, reached number 6 on the same chart. In 2024 he, Berne, Smith, the bassist Devin Hoff and the guitarist Marc Ducret released Candid on Intakt as Sunny Five. Recent releases include self-issued digital albums in 2024 and 2025, collaborations with the Swiss group Sonar, Rothko Spaces duo albums with Stephan Thelen, and a limited double LP, Now I Imagine a Place Not the Same, released by Kōu Records on May 29, 2026.

Torn combines electric and acoustic guitars with electronics and a live-looping rig he built himself, assembling dense, effects-heavy textures from phrases he samples and reshapes as he plays. Hendrix is his stated starting point, Robert Fripp's early tape-loop work shaped his first loop pieces according to AllMusic, and his teachers included John Abercrombie and Pat Martino. His records move between composed material and free improvisation, which is where his jazz standing rests: Cloud About Mercury is often cited as an 1980s fusion landmark that has influenced later guitarists and producers, and from the 2000s he became a central collaborator of the avant-garde saxophonist Tim Berne, as both player and producer. An All About Jazz review likened the voice-like sounds he draws from a whammy bar to Jeff Beck's, and the Guardian described Only Sky as a vast, stormy soundscape made in real time with guitar, electric oud and electronics. After the surgery that left him deaf in one ear he mixed his own recordings by sitting sideways to the studio speakers and picturing the stereo image in his head. His career also runs through film and television music and rock and pop sessions, so sources classify him differently: AllMusic lists jazz first among his genres, with fusion, experimental, film score and avant-garde jazz among his styles, and describes his work as blurring rock, jazz and avant music.