Sylvain Luc was born in Bayonne, in the French Basque Country, on April 7, 1965, and was a guitarist and bassist who became one of the best-known French jazz guitarists of his generation. He was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Gérard, played accordion and Serge played drums, and both worked the dance-hall circuit, so Luc grew up playing in public. He started on guitar at four, also learned violin, and studied cello at the Bayonne conservatoire because it had no guitar class. As a boy he recorded with his brothers on the albums Elgarrekin and Oinakarin. Jazz reached him through the family's circle: the accordion teacher Joe Rossi gave him a Joe Pass record, Portraits of Duke Ellington, and a local guitarist, Michel Ducau-Lucart, gave him his first guitar.

At fifteen he formed a jazz group, the Bulle Quintet, which won the San Sebastian festival in 1982. He soon became the most sought-after guitarist and bassist in the Basque region. In 1985 he met the singer Marie-Ange Damestoy and became her guitarist, arranger and composer, and in 1987 they were nominated as a revelation at the Printemps de Bourges. In 1988 he settled in Paris, where he worked as an arranger, composer and accompanist for French singers including Catherine Lara and Michel Jonasz, played bass in Richard Galliano's trio and played guitar with the trumpeter Éric Le Lann. In 1993 he became a worldwide ambassador for Godin guitars, the year of his first solo album, Piaia (Transat), and in 1994 he recorded the guitar duo Petits déjà... with Louis Winsberg.

His breakthrough came in 1999 with a run of duo records. Duet (Dreyfus Jazz) paired him with Biréli Lagrène and became, with its 2009 follow-up Summertime, his best-known work. Ameskeri with Stéphane Belmondo appeared the same year, along with Piaïa Naïa with the drummer Francis Lassus and Nahia with his brothers. That year he also founded Trio Sud with the drummer André Ceccarelli and the bassist Jean-Marc Jafet. Their albums Sud (2000) and Trio Sud (2002) were followed by Young and Fine (2008), and the group won the Victoires du Jazz in 2003 as French instrumental artist or group of the year. His solo records of the decade, Ambre (2003) and Standards (2009), used re-recording to layer up to four guitar parts, and Joko (2006) brought in guests including Jacky Terrasson and Michel Portal. In 2007 he won a Djangodor as an established musician.

From 2006 he played regularly in a string quartet with the violinist Didier Lockwood, the bassist Victor Bailey and the drummer Billy Cobham, and in 2009 he toured Europe in a trio with Steve Gadd and Richard Bona. In 2010 he received the Grand prix du jazz of the Sacem and the Académie du Jazz's Prix Django-Reinhardt, which was announced in January 2011. In May 2011 he gave a carte blanche concert at the Salle Pleyel with Lagrène, Bona, Ceccarelli and the keyboardist Thierry Eliez, and the same year came Organic, a trio record with Eliez and Ceccarelli. He had been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2005.

The later records are mostly duets and solos. Souvenirs d'enfance (2013) is a solo album built on children's songs, and Giù la testa (2014) with Stefano Di Battista reworks film themes by Ennio Morricone, Michel Legrand and Nino Rota. La Vie en rose (2015) with Galliano is a tribute to Édith Piaf and Gus Viseur, and Intranquille (2016) is a duo with Bernard Lubat. In 2019 he made D'une rive à l'autre with his wife, the classical guitarist Marylise Florid, and 2.0, a second duo album with Belmondo. In 2021 came Sylvain Luc, By Renaud Letang, a solo record of new pieces shaped with the producer Renaud Letang, Eclectik with Ceccarelli and the bassist Hadrien Féraud, and Birka, a chamber trio with Belmondo and the pianist Thierry Maillard. His last album, the solo Simple Song, was released in April 2023.

Luc passed away suddenly on March 13, 2024, at 58, in Paris's 20th arrondissement, of a heart attack. His funeral was held on March 26 at the Père-Lachaise crematorium, and he was buried two days later at the Saint-Pierre cemetery in Marseille.

Luc played mostly fingerstyle, even on a steel-string guitar, and often moved between fingers and a plectrum within a single piece. His main instruments were Godin Multiac guitars, in nylon and steel versions, and he sometimes tuned the sixth string, and occasionally the fifth, as much as an octave down so that he could play a bass line under his own chords and solos. That one-man orchestra approach explains his many solo records and his use of re-recording on Ambre and Standards. He preferred small formats, duos and trios above all, and explained that larger groups tend to mean more written music. He named Baden Powell, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Andrés Segovia, Jeff Beck, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny and Jim Hall among his influences, and he followed younger players such as Julian Lage and Nelson Veras. His repertoire ran from jazz standards to Basque folk themes, chanson and rock songs, and he also worked as a studio musician for pop singers. Peers from Metheny to Lagrène admired him, and in France he was recognised with a Victoire du Jazz, a Djangodor, the Prix Django-Reinhardt and the Sacem's Grand prix du jazz.