It was released on 13 January 1984 by Sire Records after a hiatus during which band members James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon died of drug overdoses.

As the album sessions got underway, Bremner, Graham Parker's bassist Andrew Bodnar, and Paul Carrack (formerly of Squeeze, Ace and Roxy Music) played guitar, bass and piano respectively for the track "Thin Line Between Love and Hate".

The November 1983 single "2000 Miles" was the newly reconstituted foursome's first release, followed shortly by the full Learning to Crawl studio album in January 1984.

Hynde noted in the booklet for the expanded edition of Learning to Crawl that guitarist Robbie McIntosh came up with the opening guitar riff for "2000 Miles".

[13] The instrumental introduction of the song would later be adopted as the theme of the EIB Network radio brand, originally Rush Limbaugh and later Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.