Robert Lloyd was born in Essex and educated at Oxford University.  In 1972 he was appointed Principal Bass at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he has since sung an enormous range of repertoire.
He was the first British bass to sing the title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the late Andre Tarkovsky's production in 1983.  History was made in 1990 when the same production went to the Kirov Opera in Leningrad with Robert Lloyd as Boris (televised internationally), and in 1991 he sang in the revival of this production under Claudio Abbado at the Vienna State Opera.  He has also sung the role in Amsterdam and Florence.
He has also appeared with the major opera houses of the world including The Metropolitan Opera, New York; La Scala, Milan; the Deutsche Oper, Berlin; the Opera National de Paris Bastille; the Netherlands Opera; the Salzburg Festival; the San Francisco Opera; and the Chicago Lyric Opera. His repertoire includes Don Carlos, Parsifal, Die Zauberflöte, Aida, Faust, Romeo et Juliette, Simon Boccanegra, Les Troyens, Turandot, Otello, Fidelio, Pelléas et Mélisande and Benvenuto Cellini, La Fanciulla del West, Don Giovanni, Samson et Dalila, Hamlet and Rigoletto. 
Robert Lloyd has featured in several highly successful television productions.  He has also written and presented a number of radio programmes on opera and the voice for the BBC.  He has a vast discography of over seventy audio and video recordings.  In the 1991 New Year's Honours List he was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE).