The Kids in the Hall first presented their final lineup (with Dave,
Bruce, Mark, Kevin and Scott) in Toronto in 1985. Scott Thompson
was the last to join, having seen and fallen in love
with KITH in 1984. Lorne Michaels, fellow Canadian and the
creator of Saturday Night Live, saw the Kids in Toronto
and arranged an HBO special for them in 1987 which led to the
creation of their now-famous television show in 1988.
The name "Kids in the Hall" is a reference to Jack Benny,
who would say that his jokes came from the "kids in the hall",
the prospective writers who would loiter outside of his office.
It was just supposed to be a placeholder name for the group
when they first started, but it stuck.
The Kids in the Hall sort-of disbanded in 1994 to
pursue their individual projects (Dave Foley went
to do Newsradio, Mark McKinney and Bruce McCulloch went to
SNL, Scott Thompson did something on The Larry Sanders Show
(but I'm not positive because I don't have cable) and I don't
know what; he also started a website
(http://www.scottland.com (which apparently no longer exists, but it did! Honest!)).) Kevin MacDonald guest starred on Newsradio as a knife thrower and did a National Lampoon movie whose name I forget. They released the movie, Brain Candy in 1995 and did a live tour in 2000.
I have a Kids in the Hall t-shirt in which all of the Kids are looking embarrassed in short skirts. Whenever I wear it, a third of the people I meet think I'm extremely hip, a third think I'm a dated-old fart trying to look cool and a third think I'm Satan's Child for publicly condoning transvestitism.
A really great website (including episode guides
and transcripts):
http://www.kithfan.org