Written over a six-year period, the album is lyrically reflective of Nastasia's early life growing up in Los Angeles, California, and features sparse acoustic guitar compositions with prominent string arrangements.

[2] The majority of Dogs was written over a six-year period between 1992 and 1998 when Nastasia, a Los Angeles native, relocated to New York City with a friend.

[6] Through word of mouth, it continued to gain traction internationally, receiving considerable airplay in the United Kingdom—[6] particularly on BBC Radio 1 by disc jockey John Peel who championed the album, calling it "astonishing.

[6] Gregory McIntosh of AllMusic wrote: "Dogs has a calming atmosphere, occasionally flirting with dissonance, and stands as a remarkable work of minimal building by repetition to support Nastasia's pitch-perfect voice.

It is a rare group who can pull off such a fluid shift from composed sophistication to raw, dangerous, and sinister energy and not only continue to be engaging, but make ascending demands so confidently as to require full attention for the span of 40 minutes without interruption.

"[12] Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork noted upon the album's 2004 reissue: "Dogs has the ease of a performance that you're catching as you sit in the shower stall.

praised the album's instrumentation, writing: "The arrangements are simple and always immaculate, incorporating strings and saws and brushes, heavy with space.

The singing saw is just another character in her stories, the whine of a ghostly dog following his own path, ambling through the record and leaving aching hearts in his wake.