To improve the error correction performance, an innovative encoding structure with tail-biting for spinal codes is designed. Furthermore, an adaptive forward stack decoding (A-FSD) algorithm with lower complexity for spinal codes is proposed. In the A-FSD algorithm, a flexible threshold parameter is set by a variable channel state to narrow the scale of nodes accessed. On this basis, a new decoding method of AFSD with early termination (AFSD-ET) is further proposed. The AFSD-ET decoder not only has the ability of dynamically modifying the number of stored nodes, but also adopts the early termination criterion to curtail complexity. The complexity and related parameters are verified through a series of simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed spinal codes with tail-biting and the AFSD-ET decoding algorithms can reduce the complexity and improve the decoding rate without sacrificing correct decoding performance.