[6] In an interview with Soundwave TV, Townsend discussed how Epicloud was conceived: "In this sort of process of writing that I've discovered that I guess I'm capable of now, with a sober frame of mind, part of that is just not second-guessing it, so if I write something like that, I just do it, and just finish it."

He continued, "Over the past couple of years, I thought, 'OK, I've gotta write this next 'Ziltoid' thing; I'm inspired to make this epic space opera and, like, really overdo it, and make it really dark.'

Epicloud is the first record that I felt confident enough to include all those things on one record so it goes between melodic hard rock to schizophrenic heavy metal to country to really ambient stuff and it's all in one place.

The first meaning was inspired by the many plane journeys he and the band took while on tour, when Townsend noted how cool he thought it was that they were above the clouds, 'epi-cloud', while the second comes from the musical content of the album itself, 'epic-loud'.

[7] On the topic of his decision to re-record "Kingdom", a song from his Physicist album, which came out in 2000 on Townsend's label HevyDevy Records, Townsend said, "We re-did 'Kingdom' because it's a live set staple, and so much better now than the Physicist recording.