The singer, Thom Yorke, and the guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, developed it from an earlier unreleased song by their band Radiohead.

[1] The Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, first performed "Skrting on the Surface" in 2009 in a solo piano rendition while touring with his band Atoms for Peace.

[1] In 2021, Yorke and the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood announced a new band, the Smile, with the drummer Tom Skinner.

[10] The Fader journalist Jordan Darville called the song "an unabashed channeling of what has made Greenwood and Yorke's creative partnership so successful over the course of many decades".

[7] The Rolling Stone journalist Daniel Kreps said Skinner's drumming and Greenwood's arpeggios gave the song "a technicolour makeover" in comparison to the earlier versions.