Using a wide range of instruments on the albums ("rock", folk and orchestral), the music has been variously described as "gypsy folk to English psychedelic rock",[1] "hybrid English pop and Baroque music",[2] "a rich, lush and densely layered confection",[3] and "sprightly guitar pop".

[4] Conceptually "an ongoing and open-ended musical",[5] set partly in a fictitious village in South West England called Mousseron ("a sickly village situated somewhere east of the Azores, and only slightly north of the Styx",[6] many of the songs are "richly-textured, well-spun yarns driven by a cast of colourful eccentrics",[7] yet "the songs still function as pop in the sweetest sense".

[8] Though most of the material was written by Bid, collaborators have included Alex Kapranos ("The Spell" on the "Strange Letters" album) and David Shrigley ("Maybe", though this song only appeared on his "Worried Noodles" album); past and present members of the band have also contributed, with some lyrics made of poems by Christina Rossetti, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Edgar Allan Poe.

A few of the songs are supposed to have been material never completed by The Monochrome Set ("Miss Twinkle's Been On Holiday Again", "Why Do Spirits Haunt Ruby Auburn?

All the studio albums have been released by the Spanish label Siesta Records, in the digipak format with a 16-page colour booklet, "lavishly illustrated"[9] with "exquisite artwork which fits in perfectly with the gothic fantasy"[10] Previous members included Martin White (The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, solo music & comedy), Dickon Edwards (Orlando, Spearmint and Fosca), Kate Dornan (Fosca and The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra), Toby Robinson and Zarif.