 Writing for the album started as early as July 2011. James Spence also had stated that in that period the band have at least two songs written with the lyrics being self-reflective, a common theme for the band's music. Around this time as well, Rolo Tomassi expressed interest in working with Anthony Gonzalez or Kurt Ballou respectively of M83 and Converge as producers for the third album. However at the time insufficient progress had been made for them to search for producers. James Spence had said that with this record he wished to experiment with shoegaze, "dreamy keyboard [s]" and utilising more melodic passages. Spence has also commented that "quite progressive synth-based music" such as M83 and the horror film soundtracks Goblin have produced acted as influences.
