Lazy Records, on which the band released "Sunny Sundae Smile", requested a full-length album from My Bloody Valentine during summer 1987.

The band refused the label's request, claiming their newly formed line-up "had only been together a couple of months and hadn't really had time to get settled".

However, the sessions were "the first time [the band had] actually played around properly in the studio", which resulted in "extreme" and "quite nasty" guitar sounds,[3] which My Bloody Valentine would later become associated with.

[3] As a result, "much of what was originally the sound of Ecstacy [sic] was lost, and much of the tone was dulled" and the album "showed a group who appeared to have run out of money half way through recording".

[3] All of Ecstasy's seven tracks were written and composed by Kevin Shields, with Colm Ó Cíosóig credited as the co-writer of three tracks—"The Things I Miss", "Clair" and "(Please) Lose Yourself in Me".

[8] Regarding the lyrical content of the album in contrast to the music, Shields said that "the songs may sound sweet, but the subject matter isn't necessarily very nice.

[9] However, the music on Ecstasy has been criticised as being "directionless and floundered about within the framework of songs which appeared to be only half formed ideas,"[3] which was due to the band's in-studio experimentation with different aspects of their guitar sound.

[15] The term "shoegazing", which was considered derogatory,[16] was coined by Sounds journalists in the early 1990s to describe certain bands' "motionless performing style, where they stood on stage and stared at the floor".

Melody Maker referred to the album as "a series of aloof, pastel washes of sound, suspended guitars, words from the back of beyond tying in to a large, shifting whole" and "larger than the sum of its parts".

[22] On Ecstasy's supporting tour My Bloody Valentine conceived the idea of an interlude of white noise during live performances which was later attributed to their song "You Made Me Realise" and often exceeded 130 decibels.

[23] The band toured small student venues and, according to Kevin Shields, at "one particular place, there were these guy playing pool in the background, shouting amongst themselves and being quite loud and not paying attention".