City of Caterpillar formed in Richmond, Virginia in 2000, becoming one of the central acts in the early American screamo movement alongside Pg. 99 and Majority Rule, building lengthy compositions that shifted between near-ambient quiet and shattering emotional climaxes. The band released a self-titled full-length and split releases before disbanding in 2003, with the recordings gaining wider recognition in subsequent years as touchstones of the form. The band reunited in 2016 and released their second album Mystic Sisters in 2022.

Cloudkicker is the solo project of Columbus, Ohio-based guitarist Ben Sharp, a commercial airline pilot who has released instrumental post-metal and djent music under that alias since 2007. Sharp composes, records, and engineers everything himself, and has distributed all releases as pay-what-you-want downloads under Creative Commons licensing, amassing an unusually large following for a DIY studio project. His breakthrough album Beacons arrived in 2010, and a short touring run in 2014 with Intronaut as a backing band marked his only live performances.