[7][8] Empire of the Sun's 2008 debut album, Walking on a Dream, brought the duo international success and has been certified double platinum in Australia and gold in the United Kingdom.

[25] This prompted a change in direction for the band who began to craft a work more vocally-centered album featuring guest performances.

[26] A track-by-track analysis of the album Pnau revealed that writing of "With You Forever" with Luke Steele inspired Littlemore's band to begin work on a collaborative project.

[28] The new project began to develop under the working title of "Steelemore" as a collaboration between Steele and Littlemore,[24] with Pnau partner Peter Mayes listed as a producer and occasional co-writer.

[34] Upon their return to Australia Steele began to prepare for a live debut of the band at Parklife Festival in September and October 2009.

[35] They headlined three shows, described as a visual "overload [where] giant graphics swam and spun over the stage as costumed dancers writhed to the beat and Steele on a pedestal onstage, [wearing] a gigantic metallic headpiece and his usual 'Ming The Merciless' robe".

[39]Littlemore decided to opt out of performing with the band live, citing 'I’ve always felt that once you make a record it's not yours anymore'.

[34] Steele gave the impression that his partner left the band in September 2009, however, Littlemore resurfaced in the following month, citing his production work and a project with Cirque du Soleil as the reason for the lack of communication.

[42][43] Towards the end of 2009, the band received a number of ARIA Awards for Walking on a Dream, including Best Album of the Year.

[49] In October 2010, "We Are the People" was used as the soundtrack for a Vodafone TV commercial in Germany and subsequently topped the German Singles Chart.

[41] In July 2011, Littlemore announced that the band had gone into the studio at the end of June to begin working on a second Empire of the Sun album while he confirmed would "come on board this time, actually come together and tour".

On 11 March 2013, the band revealed a trailer for their second album entitled Ice on the Dune directed by J. D. Dillard and confirmed the release date as June 2013.

[62] Steele received global media attention following an interview he completed with music publication NME in August 2013 at the Sziget Festival in Budapest.

During the interview, Steele compared Ice on the Dune with Daft Punk's 2013 album release Random Access Memories, stating: "They had a great marketing campaign, but we’ve got better songs.

logo on 5 September 2013, played over the end credits of the 2013 film Paranoia, and featured in the movie Dumb and Dumber To.

[64] In December 2014, Empire of the Sun released two songs, "Tonight" and "Wandering Star", which were written for the Farrelly brothers film, Dumb and Dumber To.

The album was co-produced by Peter Mayes and features contributions by Lindsey Buckingham, Wendy Melvoin, and former David Bowie collaborators Henry Hey and Tim Lefebvre.

[70] In September 2017, DS Automobiles released a video featuring a new exclusive Empire song, "On Our Way Home", starring the Ukrainian actress and model Alina Kovalenko.

He stated: "the name comes more from the idea of ... the fact that we're traveling around the world going to all the places of empires of the civilization where the sun has been a theme of worship.

[62] Steele described the inspiration for the visual aspect as "the vision of this band, it's built on imagination, so it comes from studying the samurais in art school to digital graphics, to topography, to filming under the ocean, to oil paintings, anything really.