Kim Thayil (born September 4, 1960 in Seattle, Washington) is best known as the guitarist for Seattle-based grunge band Soundgarden, which he founded with Chris Cornell and Hiro Yamamoto in 1984. He was named 100th best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine.

Born in Seattle in 1960, he grew up in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest. Thayil's parents are from the south Indian state of Kerala.

He met Hiro Yamamoto at Rich East High School in Park Forest. After graduation, they moved to Washington, where Thayil studied philosophy at the University of Washington. They joined forces with Cornell, a roommate, to start Soundgarden in 1984. Soundgarden became the first of Seattle's grunge bands to sign with a major label (A&M Records) and went on to release three platinum albums and win two Grammys. They disbanded in April 1997.

Since then, Thayil has played guitar for Pigeonhed, with the Presidents of the United States of America, played on Dave Grohl's metal side-project Probot, and No WTO Combo with Jello Biafra and Krist Novoselic, and has also worked on other projects. Recently Kim contributed guitar to the track "Blood Swamp" from the 2006 SunnO)))/Boris album Altar.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named Thayil #100 on the list of the "100 greatest guitarists of all time".

Thayil, having won two Grammys while in Soundgarden, is one of three Indian-Americans in the Grammy-considered rock music industry (the other two being Anand Bhatt and Tony Kanal) and one of five major diasporic Indians in rock music (the other four being Bhatt, Kanal, Ian D'Sa and Dave Baksh).

Thayil was a recurring participant on the Almost Live! sketch comedy show, calling things "lame" during "The Lame List" segments.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Thayil