It is hard to believe that it has only been three years since Scotland's historic referendum on independence from the UK.

It all started when the SNP, led by Alex Salmond, won an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament, paving the way for an in-out referendum on Scotland remaining as part of the United Kingdom.

What followed was a political phenomenon that gripped the country.

As the vote got closer, the hype reached fever-pitch and you couldn't leave the house, watch the TV, listen to the radio or read a newspaper without hearing another strongly held opinion on which way the vote should go.

Even family members were debating issues such as oil prices and nuclear weapons over breakfast.

During the final weeks of the campaign, daily rallies were being held in George Square, Glasgow, while live TV debates had taken over Eastenders and Coronation Street as essential family viewing and windows in cars and houses in every town, village and housing scheme in Scotland were covered with Yes and No posters.

Then, on September 18, 2014, more than 3.6m people took to the polls in the hope the vote would go their way.

A majority of 55% (2,001,926) voted No to reject the Scottish Government's call for independence.

So that was that and after three long years of endless campaigning the debate on Scottish independence could finally be put to bed and normality resumed.

But if anything, the constitutional question only seemed to dominate the political landscape even further.

We take a look at how things have unfolded in the three years since the historic vote.

In the early hours of September 19, as the result started to become clear, an exhausted looking Alex Salmond was pictured in the back of his car on his way to concede defeat.

As expected, the SNP leader later said he would be resigning as both party leader and First Minister at his party's upcoming conference following his defeat at the ballot box.

With the SNP having failed in their ultimate ambition to gain Scottish independence, it was initially unclear in what direction the party would go - both in terms of policies and in popularity amongst the voting public.

While Salmond was left dejected, a jubilant David Cameron appeared on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street to declare victory for the Union.

The Prime Minister, alongside the leaders of the two other main UK parties, had promised the transfer of more powers to Scotland if the country rejected independence.

In his victory speech, however, the Conservative leader also called for new legislation to ensure Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs could no longer vote on issues that would only affect England. This was christened English Votes for English Laws (EVEL).

The SNP accused the Prime Minister of going back on his pre-referendum promises but the Conservatives argued it was a way to even up the fact that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had their own devolved governments while English MPs had to vote with others on issues that only affected them.

Following Salmond's resignation, Sturgeon stood as the only candidate to replace the SNP leader and was duly elected as the party's new leader and Scotland's first female First Minister.

On May 7, 2015 a UK-wide general election saw the Conservatives, already in power as part of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, win an unexpected majority.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon's soaring popularity helped her party win a record 56 seats out of 59.

The SNP leader's profile was not only increasing in Scotland, her performance in a UK-wide TV debate won her plaudits from across the nation.

At the last general election the party had only won six seats, with the majority of Scottish seats turning shades of Labour red.

But under new leader Jim Murphy, an ardent campaigner for a No vote, Labour were the biggest losers of the election in Scotland, waving goodbye to all but one of the party's seats north of the border.

Liberal Democrats were seemingly punished for getting into coalition with the Tories as they also plummeted into obscurity on both sides of the border, winning only one seat in Scotland.

The Scottish Conservatives held on to their only seat with MP David Mundell becoming the new Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Tory majority also meant that a proposed referendum on the UK's membership of the EU would now take place.

A year after the Westminster election the Holyrood elections took place on May 5, 2016.

In what was the first poll since the referendum, it would be a clear indicator of how the vote had shaped politics in the country.

At the ballot box, the SNP increased their share of the vote and remained the biggest party, but fell short of the outright majority that they had won four years earlier.

However, the six seats won by the Scottish Greens were enough to hold onto a "pro-independence" majority inside the Holyrood chamber.

During the campaign the SNP said it would reserve the right to hold another indyref if there was a "significant change of circumstances", in particular if Scotland was taken out of EU against its will.

The biggest story of the election was the continued rise of the Scottish Conservatives and growing popularity of leader Ruth Davidson. The party leapfrogged Labour into second place.

Davidson's party more than doubled its number of seats in Holyrood from 15 to 31 as Scottish Labour, under yet another new leader Kezia Dugdale, suffered its worst-ever performance in a Scottish election in living memory.

As a result of the Tories winning a majority at Westminster in 2015 the EU referendum they had promised came to fruition the following year.

Both the Prime Minister and the then-chancellor George Osborne campaigned for the country to remain a member of the EU.

However, some cabinet members did not. Most infamously Boris Johnson and Michael Gove joined the campaign to take Britain out.

Despite the Remain campaign being odds-on favourite to win, more than 17m people across the UK voted to leave the EU, which handed the Brexiteers victory by a margin of 52% to 48%.

An overwhelming majority of Scots voted to stay in the EU.

This difference in opinion meant the SNP's 2015 manifesto referendum clause was met - Scotland was about to be taken out of the EU despite not voting for it.

After the unexpected result of the EU referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron, who had only won his majority a year earlier, stepped down as PM.

A quick and vicious leadership contest then ensued to find the next Prime Minister.

Early favourite for the role was Boris Johnson but he soon stood down from running after his Brexit colleague Michael Gove reversed his support for him and entered the race himself.

Gove himself then fell out of the running when he couldn't command the backing of MPs, leaving it to be a two-way fight between Remain-voting Home Secretary Theresa May and pro-Leave, but relatively unknown, Andrea Leadsom.

After a hinting that she was more qualified to be Prime Minister as she had children and her opponent did not, Leadsom dropped out of the running.

The path was now clear for May and on July 11, 2016 she became the country's second women Prime Minister.

After several meetings between the Scottish and UK governments about the future of the country after Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon declared her intentions to hold another independence referendum.

Despite the referendum clause being in the SNP's manifesto, and a majority of MSPs backing Sturgeon's call, the Prime Minister said "now is not the time" for a second independence vote.

After spending months saying she would not call an unscheduled election, May did the opposite.

She was riding high in the polls. What could possibly go wrong?

As the campaign got under way, support for the under-fire Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slowly crept up with his socialist policy programme that promised to scrap tuition fees, nationalise railways and bring an end to austerity proving popular.

As the vote got closer,the polls started to tighten.

Corbyn toured the country in a bid to reach potential voters.

Theresa May on the other hand was seeing her campaign and Westminster majority melt away in front of her eyes.

Despite polls continuing to tighten, most pollsters and commentators still had the Tories winning a majority.

But as the results came in, it became clear that the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn had been underrated as Labour performed much better than predicted in almost every part of the country.

The Tories lost 13 seats across the UK and, most importantly, their majority.

Against all expectations Labour gained an additional 30 seats, in stark contrasts to earlier predictions of electoral oblivion.

However, in a dramatic, unexpected, and what just a few years earlier would have been an unthinkable turn of events, the Tories clung on to power with 12 new seats in Scotland as support for an SNP weakened from its 2015 high watermark.

Despite retaining their position as Scotland's largest party, and recording what was the second best result in their history, the fall from two years earlier meant it felt like a defeat for Nicola Sturgeon as she lost 21 of her MPs.

Both the Corbyn surge, a rise in unionist support for Tories and ever-growing popularity of Ruth Davidson meant the SNP were squeezed from both sides.

The SNP leader admitted her call for a second independence vote had been a factor in the losses.

To make matters worse for the SNP they lost two of their biggest hitters as former leader Alex Salmond, voted in as an MP for Gordon in 2015, lost his seat to a Tory candidate as did the party's Westminster leader Angus Robertson in Moray.

Despite calls for her to resign, Theresa May managed to do a deal with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party that allowed her to remain as PM albeit with a much more fragile majority than before she called the election.

Just a few months after the general election result Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who had been a vocal opponent of Jeremy Corbyn, stepped down from her role as party leader.

It is yet to be seen if Scottish Labour will move further to the left in a bid to eat into the SNP's support in urban Scotland.

The Scottish Tories are also in a polar opposite position from their UK-wide party with the popularity of leader Ruth Davidson continuing to grow as Theresa May's continues to fall, so much so that the Scottish leader has been tipped as a future replacement for May.

The process of Brexit remains a massive thorn in the side of May's government and many believe that the knives are already out within her own party as they look for a replacement leader.

Boris Johnson and a host of others look like the early front runners to take on the job when the position becomes available.

As for the SNP it now looks increasingly likely that any hope for indyref2 is now off the table at least until the next Scottish election in 2021 as they look to bring back the support they had in the direct aftermath of 2014's vote.

So despite three long years and endless debates on the issues it doesn't look like we are anywhere nearer to resolving the issue that continues to divide the nation.