Tried to update to El Capitan, MacBook only boots up to OS X Utilities. Help!

Over the weekend I tried updating my MacBook to El Capitan.

Having had issues updating before, I backed up all of my files to an external hard drive and began downloading.

When the computer tried to install it, it kept saying that the hard drive had to be verified or could not install the update.

Having restarted the laptop a few times and getting the same results, I booted the mac up into recovery mode so I could try and reset it.

I cleared my hard drive and repaired/verified it. I reinstalled OS X and tried restarting it after that.

Now every time I turn my MacBook on it goes to OS X utilities, and will only let me pick the recovery drive as the startup disk.

Not sure where to go from here, so any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks everyone!