MS PRIDE OF BRUGES was built as MS NORSUN for North Sea Ferries as part of their response to the need for larger vessels in the mid to late 1980s. The 1974 ships MV NORLAND and MV NORSTAR were proving to be very popular, and were running at capacity. Therefore, North Sea Ferries designed their "3rd Generation" overnight ferry. The two parent companies within North Sea Ferries placed their orders in two separate locations. P&O placed theirs at Govan Shipbuilders Ltd. on the River Clyde, and Nedlloyd placed their order at Nippon Kokkan KK Ltd. (Now JFE Holdings) in Yokohama, Japan.
NORSUN entered service on the Hull-Rotterdam route. In May 2001 P&O Ferries ordered LA PRIDE OF HULL and PRIDE OF ROTTERDAM. NORSUN was lifted from duty on the Hull-Rotterdam route, and passed on the Zeebrugge route.
In October 2016 the company decided to refurbish the ship. In October 2020, due to the drop in traffic created by the Coronavirus pandemic, P&O put it out of service together with its sister PRIDE OF YORK, and on December 15, 2020, announced on that the service would be discontinued from January 1, 2021 and that the ships would be scrapped.
On 12 April 2021 the PRIDE OF BRUGES and the sister ship PRIDE OF YORK are purchased by the Italian company Grandi Navi Veloci.
The two ships to date have arrived in Naples and are undergoing maintenance to take up service on the Naples - Palermo route.