Gurcharan Singh Grewal was born on 4 May 1911 in Lahore (now Pakistan).
His grandparents came from Kila Raipur village in Ludhiana district, India. His father, Inder Singh Grewal formed the Grewal Sports Association in 1933 and organised the first Kila Raipur Sports festival. The festival has been a regular annual feature since then.
Gurcharan studied at Government College, Lahore. He was a member of the Punjab hockey team which won the 1932 Inter-Provincial Hockey Championship.
He was selected for the Indian hockey team for the first and only edition of the Western Asiatic Games, held in Delhi ion 2 March 1934. He played as a right fullback in the match against Afghanistan which India won 5 - 0 to win the gold medal.
He was a member of the Punjab hockey team in the Inter-Provincial Hockey Championship held in 1936 (no championship was held in 1934).
He was selected for India's team at Berlin 1936 Olympic Games.
Towards the closing phases of World War 11 and after, two Indian Services hockey teams visited various stations to entertain British troops. The first team was led by Dhyan Chand (then a lieutenant in the British Indian Army) which visited Manipur, Burma, the Far East and Ceylon. The captain of the second team was Gurcharan (then a captain in the British Indian Army) who played matches in India, Burma and Malaya.
His younger brother, Mehar Singh Grewal was also a prominent hockey player.
Gurcharan died of a heart attack on 7 February 1949 in Madras (now Chennai) India at the young age of 37. At that time, he was serving as a lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army. He was chief ordnance officer of 206 Base Ordnance Depot in the suburb of Avadi.