[3] Rustic Overtones started in the early 1990s as a three-piece cover band known as Aces Wild with Dave Gutter, Jon Roods, and then-drummer and close friend Matthew Esty, playing small bars.

Rustic Overtones gained popularity during the mid to late 1990s in the Portland, Maine, music scene, although it had many self-financed tours throughout the country, mostly the northeastern states.

The band was shortly picked up afterward by Tommy Boy and released the album in 2001, which featured guest appearances by Funkmaster Flex, Imogen Heap, and David Bowie.

Dave Gutter and Jon Roods met up with one-time Overtones drummer Marc Boisvert, and formed Paranoid Social Club, another band that enjoyed success, with its single "Wasted" appearing in the soundtrack to the movie Beerfest.

In early spring of 2007, drummer Tony McNaboe began the process of reuniting the band, calling each former member separately, and telling them that everyone else had already agreed to a reunion.

[4] In May 2007, Tony McNaboe, Spencer Albee, and Jon Roods made a surprise announcement on Portland's WCYY that the entire band did indeed plan to reunite, and were in the process of scheduling local reunion shows.

In addition, after a month of rumors and gossip, the band also announced that they had been working on a new album of previously unreleased material and newly written music, eventually titled Light at the End, which was released independently in late July 2007 coinciding with the two reunion shows.

Drummer Tony McNaboe explained that Spencer was parting ways on good terms, and that work on a new album would continue as planned with multi-instrumentalist Nigel Hall from Lettuce filling in on keyboards.

[9] In its earliest days, Rustic Overtones was mostly classified as a rock and soul band, citing as their heaviest influences artists such as Earth, Wind, and Fire and Tom Waits, and playing with a raw sound.