With the release of their album Joggers and Smoggers, The Ex were developing further collaborations with musicians from around the world, including New York-based cellist Tom Cora.

In the midst of launching their six-part record subscription series and organizing tours on North American, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, The Ex and Cora spent a week in Dolf Planteijdt's studio at the end of January 1991.

Dean McFarlane of Allmusic wrote that by this time the band "were starting to experiment in new tangents that incorporated the influence of folk and free improvisation."

Scrabbling at the Lock's cover photo depicted the Montparnasse derailment, a dramatic trainwreck that occurred in France in October 1895, and the record was the first of The Ex's album's to include only one insert: a single, large, black-and-white poster.

Writing for Trouser Press, critic Douglass Wolk gushed about the record, calling it, "the Ex's first genuinely great album," calling Cora "the closest thing the cello has to a Jimi Hendrix," noting that "the Ex were expanding how a punk band could sound by exploring improvisation and traditional music," and summarizing the album's results as "adventurous, fresh and lovely-and also rock like a house on fire.