He first came to prominence at the inaugural Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977, at which he was named Best Australian Pianist (he was a judge at the 2004 competition). He later studied overseas on a Churchill Fellowship.

Lane’s English father and Australian mother met while auditioning as piano students for the Royal College of Music. Lane was born in London and he grew up in Brisbane. He graduated with a Medal of Excellence from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where his teacher was Nancy Weir, winning the Margaret Nickson Prize in 1978 and the Ruby C Cooling prize in 1977 and 1978. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate by the conservatorium.

In 1994 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, where he has been a professor of piano since 1989. In 2007 he received an honorary doctorate from Griffith University, Brisbane. Lane is patron and an active supporter of the Tait Memorial Trust in London, a charitable foundation to support young Australian performing artists in the UK.

Since 2007, Lane is the Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music held annually in Townsville.

Lane is the Artistic Director of the Myra Hess Day held annually at the National Gallery in London, and of the 2009 Bloch Festival at Wigmore Hall. Lane’s recording of Ernest Bloch Piano Quintets Nos. 1 and 2 with the Goldner Quartet (Hyperion) was nominated for BBC Music Magazine Awards in 2009.

On 11 June 2012, Lane was named an Officer of the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to the performing arts as an internationally renowned classical pianist, to professional and cultural organisations, and to the development of emerging musicians.”

Lane has an extensive discography on the Hyperion label and has also recorded for EMI, Decca, BMG, Lyrita and Unicorn-Khanchana. Recent releases from Hyperion include concertos by Eyvind Alnæs and Christian Sinding, a Delius song disc with Yvonne Kenny and a recording of Ernest Bloch’s Piano Quintets with the Goldner String Quartet, which was an Editor’s Choice in the December 2007 Gramophone magazine and BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Month for February 2008. He is one of the few pianists to have recorded John Ireland’s Piano Concerto in E-flat major. In 2014 Hyperion released his recording of the complete piano concertos of Malcolm Williamson, including the world premiere recording of the 4th Piano Concerto. Lane is a well-known voice on BBC Radio 3, having written and presented more than 100 programs, including a 54-part series called The Piano.

In April 2015, following the death of the inaugural Artistic Director Warren Thomson in February, Piers Lane was announced as the Artistic Director of the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition.