We have investigated the spectral and temporal evolution of Neutron Star Low‐Mass X‐ray Binaries (NS LMXBs) using a sample of eight bright sources. INTEGRAL spectra from 2003 to 2009 and some near‐simultaneous RXTE and Swift spectra have been fitted with the recently developed thermal and bulk Comptonization model compTB. In this proposed scenario, the transient hard X‐ray tails exhibited by the Z sources and GX 13+1 are connected to efficient bulk motion Comptonization in the inner Transition Layer (TL), while the lack of a tail could be due to too low or too high local accretion rates. Another difference between the source types—the long‐term modulation of the Atoll source light curves (with the notable exception of GX 13+1)—is seen to be mostly independent of spectral evolution, while presumably driven by changes in the overall accretion rate from the companion.