After touring in support of their eighth studio album Moving Pictures (1981), the band gathered recordings made over the previous two years and constructed a live release from them with producer Terry Brown.

Stage Left was recorded from June 10–11, 1980 at The Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland, during the band's tour for their seventh studio album, Permanent Waves.

Whenever they found a technical fault or a wrong note affecting an otherwise acceptable performance, they replaced it using material from other shows in their collection of tapes.

[10] None of the individual band members is credited with the album's production; the duty fell to their longtime producer, Terry Brown.

Stage Left, noting that the group tried to make it sound "too perfect" in part by reducing the levels of audience noise,[10] while Alex Lifeson for his part thought the album sounded too clean and not as raw as All the World's a Stage, and as a consequence the band aimed to reach a "middle ground" between the two with A Show of Hands, Rush's third live release.

On "La Villa Strangiato", the introductory classical guitar solo from the original recording is played on electric guitar and doubled in length, Lee sings part of a nursery rhyme in Yiddish during the "Danforth and Pape" section (the liner notes include a translation of his words), and a short bass and percussion solo is added before the "Monsters!

Both album covers show Rush's live setup on an empty stage, although the band no longer used the white carpet by the time of Exit...

A limited-edition promotional 6-track vinyl sampler: Rush 'N' Roulette, included excerpts of six tracks from Exit...Stage Left.

The promotional album used a unique mastering process in which concentric grooves were inscribed so that different material would be played depending on where the stylus was put down on the record's surface.

Stage Left was remastered for vinyl in 2015 by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios as a part of the official "12 Months of Rush" promotion.

[15] The high definition master prepared for this release was also made available for purchase in a 24-bit/48 kHz digital format at several high-resolution audio online music stores.

Sean Magee remastered the audio from an analog copy of the original digital master, using a 192 kHz sample rate.

All tracks are written by Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, except where noted^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.