The band formed in Providence, Rhode Island around 2004 when Perkins moved to the East Coast upon completing Ash Wednesday, although the members have been friends and collaborators for many years.

His mother was a great-grandniece of art expert Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), whose sister Senda (1868–1954) was an athlete and educator and one of the first two women elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Perkins took to music at an early age, briefly learning the saxophone before picking up the guitar in high school and taking lessons with Prescott Niles, one-time bassist for The Knack.

In the same year, on September 2, he performed an acoustic benefit concert in New York City at the Housing Works Bookstore Café to help promote the project's first publication.

The album featured the first incarnation of his I Aubade touring band, multi-instrumentalists Mitchell Robe and Danielle Aykroyd, a songwriter who goes by the pseudonym Vera Sola.

[7] The New York Times wrote: "The Blackcoat's Daughter bewitches with silky-smooth camera movements and a rolling, reverberating musical score (by Elvis Perkins, the director's brother).