After recording A Crimson Cosmos and touring with Lake of Tears until 1999, he also left the band and had to be substituted by Magnus Sahlgren, who played as lead guitarist, but only as a guest artist.

Although he played on Forever Autumn and every subsequent Lake of Tears album, often composing the majority of lead guitar riffs, Sahlgren was only formally accepted as a band member following the release of 2004's Black Brick Road.

This being the case, Brennare and Sahlgren retreated to the studio to record The Neonai, an electronica-influenced album relying on drum machines and uncharacteristically slick production values.

They were quick to realize that the brief hiatus had reinvigorated their collective spirits, and began to tentatively compose the material eventually released on their 2004 endeavor, Black Brick Road.

The subsequent release of Black Brick Road found the band exploring fresh concepts -the majority of the songs are highly abstract in nature, focusing on emotional states and dream- like imagery over specific nods to fantasy fiction and narrative structure.

[citation needed] Following the album's release, Magnus Sahlgren was finally accepted as a member of the band, making his almost five years association official.

It features an even heavier, darker approach, eschewing the band's typical evocation of mournful themes in favor of bleak and disturbing imagery.

On 13 July 2020, Daniel Brennare publicly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with chronic leukemia, and that Illwill was "maybe a more obscure way" of dealing with it [5] The same post suggests the name of the next album is "Ominous".