Speaking in 2005, Marsh more broadly described "moving around London on the tube, going to meetings, working all over the place, and listening to music on these Stowaways" as inspiring the album. He described the album's concept as "the soundtrack for your life" and said that listening to music on Stowaways "made you feel like you were in a film all the time. Everyone takes that for granted now, but you can't imagine the big impact it had – almost on the level of something like virtual reality." The album was also inspired in part by Brian Eno's Music for Films (1978). Ware explained that he always enjoyed the idea of "music written for a purpose – for a film soundtrack, a theatre piece... I’ve always thought narrative was important."
