Described as a blues rock album, Liquid Skin was compared to the work of Beck, the Grateful Dead, and Pearl Jam.

Liquid Skin received generally favourable reviews from critics, many of whom found it to be a retread of Bring It On with improved production.

Preceded by a two-month tour of the United States, "Bring It On" was released as the lead single from Liquid Skin on 28 June 1999.

Gomez appeared at a number of festivals, prior to the release of the album's second single "Rhythm & Blues Alibi" on 30 August 1999.

Coinciding with the release of Liquid Skin, the band embarked on tours of the US and the UK, which were then followed by its third single "We Haven't Turned Around" on 8 November 1999.

[16] The album's title went through multiple names – God's Big Spaceship and Touching Up – before settling on Liquid Skin, which was inspired by a product they had found while in the United States.

[22] Gray wrote the song in a house on Ash Grove in Leeds; when they were recording it, the hall they were tracking in would burn down frequently.

[25] It ends with a raga rock coda; the song was written around the same time as "Tijuana Lady" (from Bring It On), though was abandoned and left off their debut.

[28] "Las Vegas Dealer" begins as a psychedelic piece and vocal harmonies in the vein of the Moody Blues, before incorporating Eastern rhythms.

[31][32] "Rhythm & Blues Alibi" was written by Ball while attending university; Ottewell saw it as "taking the piss out of R&B music" and "the band and probably me, particularly!".

Ball was playing guitar with a Zoom Sampletrak sampler, when Gray suggested using some of the parts from it as the song's bridge section.

[60] AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine saw the album as a "cleaner, more streamlined version" of Bring It On, adding that they perform music "that they believe to be experimental or rootsy, but not quite going far enough in either direction".

[31] Los Angeles Times writer Richard Cromelin said Gomez had "a free-ranging imagination, twisting and distorting and juxtaposing [their songs] with an exhilarating sense of freedom".

[62] PopMatters editor Sarah Zupko wrote that band had "picked up a few new studio tricks or two and rounded out their sound with fuller textures and better-produced mixes".

[63] In a review for Rolling Stone, journalist Greg Kot wrote that "the arrangements on Liquid Skin are more substantial, beefed up with strings and horns, and the songs sturdier" than those on Bring It On.