Leonard has stated in several interviews that he was inspired to write music after watching a David Bowie retrospective at the age of 13, and subsequently wrote 100 songs in the space of six months.
[3] Kieran Leonard's debut album Out of Work Astronaut was recorded largely in a home studio in North London and released in August 2012.
Citing the collapse of a long-term relationship, he abandoned the gothic church where he had been living on the Moors of North Yorkshire and spontaneously moved to Los Angeles for an indefinite time.
Leonard ended up using several Hollywood studios and producers, however he was ultimately dissatisfied with the extensive LA sessions, despite having been enthused and inspired by the musicians and artists he had met and worked with.
[6] In January 2015, Leonard was invited to continue work on his upcoming second album at Stanley Kubrick's family estate in St. Albans, Hertfordshire.
[7] The intention cited by Leonard was to record the material he had developed in LA as entirely 'live' as possible, with his band playing together in the same room and even his lead vocals being laid down 'live' with the track.
Leonard immediately released the single 'Underwood Milk' on Fierce Panda Records[8] from this session and in February embarked on an extensive tour of UK and Europe with his friend Father John Misty.
[9] It was during the Kubrick sessions that Leonard and his band improvised and recorded the fifteen minute long 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in a single take.
[10] At the end of a busy 2015 full of extensive festival appearances and many London shows, Leonard left the capital once again and maintained sporadic contact with his team in the UK.
He eventually surfaced in late December in the Mojave Desert residing in a motel near Joshua Tree, where he was undergoing what he describes as a transcendental mystical experience.
[14] Tom Doyle from Q magazine gave the album a four star rating, describing it as "top notch stuff that draws comparisons with Neil Young and Father John Misty.
[16] A music video was released on 12 June, directed by Markus Schroder and starring Sophie Kennedy Clark; with Jonathan Meades providing additional narration.
[23][24] In 2018, Leonard began collaborating with guitarist Joshua Hayward of the Horrors, alongside Bassist Panda from TOY and former Klaxons member Steffan Halperin rejoining on drums.
[28] The single was received to very favourable reviews with NME declaring 'The result is a psych-rock cracker that sounds like the great lost collaboration between Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Spiders From Mars and Sunn 0))), drifting by in a giddy swirl of surreal visions, H. G. Wells references (“he knows what sells”), inappropriate behaviour at major tourist landmarks (“I undress you on The Bridge of Sighs”) and space-age philosophies.
'[29] The Music video released for 'Light Years' is a single shot of Leonard performing the song live in Abbey Road Studios 'Studio One' on a piano originally used by The Beatles.
[31] In June, another track taken from the church album sessions titled 'Dark Miracles' was released, accompanied by a notably avant garde music video featuring the Korean visual artist Seulgi Lee Kang.
[37] In March 2020, during the first national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Leonard commenced a sequence of 'Live Transmission Gigs' from his living room in Highgate, London.