It was released on 7 June 2021 through Elektra and Parlophone Records, as the second single from her debut mixtape To Hell with It.

In early 2021, PinkPantheress started recording one song a day, taking an hour a day after coming home from university to write and record 20-second loops, which she posted as short-form videos on the social media platform TikTok to reach a wider audience.

[1] In January 2021, one of these loops, a 12-second snippet of her song "Pain", was posted to TikTok with the caption, "Day 11 of posting a song every day bc [sic] i have nothing else to do," and it quickly gained attention on the platform.

[4][2] The piano part is a sampled version of French pianist Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopédies".

[5][6] Gigwise's Joe Smith described "Pain" as "a mish-mash of Britain's urban landscapes".