It is the band's only studio album to feature guitarist and keyboardist Simon Liddell, a touring member who joined them in a permanent capacity after the departure of Gordon Skene.

Hutchison moved to Los Angeles to be with his girlfriend at the time, and recorded a solo album, Owl John (2014), while the rest of the band remained in Glasgow.

Painting of a Panic Attack marked a departure from Frightened Rabbit's signature sound as they began to incorporate electronic elements into their music.

[2] Drummer Grant Hutchison told Jason Keil of the Phoenix New Times that they "just got run absolutely ragged [...] We all lost each other and ourselves a little bit" over the tour.

In a statement on Facebook, the remaining members of Frightened Rabbit said, "There is no more to tell other than sometimes things just don't work out and when people have differing opinions often the best option is to simply part ways and get on with life separately.

[10] This meeting proved largely unproductive, as Hutchison dealt with writer's block, which Grant believed was due to his brother "forcing himself to try something different, rather than just writing naturally and then maybe tweaking it a little bit".

[12] Grant believed that the transatlantic communication actually helped the band, because "[w]hen you're in a room with someone [...] You either hold back from saying anything or you say something and it causes offense, or it creates tension, and there was none of that.

[12][15] After a two-week break,[11] Painting of a Panic Attack was finished at Dessner's home studio, Aaron's Garage,[16] in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

[18] Unlike previous records, such Pedestrian Verse and Frightened Rabbit's second studio album The Midnight Organ Fight (2008), which were written some time after the breakup that inspired them, most of the lyrics on Painting of a Panic Attack were composed while Hutchison was in the midst of the relationship.

[20] Hutchison told The Skinny that Pedestrian Verse "became a conclusion of sorts", and the band began to move towards a different sound with Painting of a Panic Attack.

"[25] Monaghan told Transmission Glasgow that they chose to release "Death Dream" and "Get Out" first "so people have been reassured hopefully by the first one [...] and then saw that things are a bit different with the second one".

[28] The music video for "Woke Up Hurting" was directed by Dan Massie, and set in the abandoned Beelitz-Heilstätten military hospital complex, just outside of Berlin.

On 14 June 2016, Frightened Rabbit released a solo acoustic video for "Die Like A Rich Boy", featuring Hutchison singing and playing guitar on a bench in an abandoned building.

[34] As part of the Painting of a Panic Attack album announcement, Frightened Rabbit also released dates for a spring 2016 United States tour, with support from Caveman.

[23] In June, they added a series of summer and fall tour dates across Europe and North America, including appearances at Glastonbury Festival, Down the Rabbit Hole, and Lollapalooza.

[35] In August 2016, Hutchison posted and deleted a series of tweets that he called "a bit of a meltdown", and the result of "mixing alcohol, depression, and social media".

[41] While James Christopher Monger of AllMusic declared that Frightened Rabbit created "another swoon-inducing, bloody-sleeved collection of erudite indie rock anthems that distill angst, both existential and situational, into fist-pumping crowd-pleasers",[43] reviews largely focused on the ways in which Frightened Rabbit's sound evolved and matured on the record, without losing the lyrical and acoustic elements that have come to define the band.

[30] Many reviewers commented on the way that the instrumentation accompanies Hutchison's lyrics and melodies, with Robin Murray of Clash praising the manner in which "the stripped down arrangements [allow] each part to gain just slightly more prominence".

Club was less enthusiastic about the instrumental shift, saying that the "subdued soundscape is ultimately a move that sacrifices a bit of the power that made the band so great to begin with".

[48] In the case of Painting of a Panic Attack, Cohen said the album falls "somewhere in between", and that the thing missing is "some kind of levity or the cutting humor that once personalized Hutchison's self-loathing".

[48] The greatest dissenting voice came from Charles Steinberg of Under the Radar, who opined that "the incorporation of frontman Scott Hutchison's verses of cagey lament and realization into Dessner's poignant pop arrangements feels contrived rather than meant to be".