[1] Around the same time, Dhar and Maryland-based drummer Anup Sastry (Jeff Loomis, Intervals), who had uploaded several videos of himself performing Skyharbor songs to his YouTube channel, discussed the possibility of taking the material to the live stage.

In May 2012 they supported American groove metal band Lamb of God on the India date of their 2012 world tour, after being handpicked by drummer Chris Adler.

Skyharbor performed on the 2nd day of the 2013 UK Tech Metal Festival as main support to headliners Veil of Maya, followed by a mini-tour of Russia with Monuments and TesseracT.

Skyharbor quickly followed this up with a second appearance at Euroblast Festival and their first UK headline tour in October 2013, before taking a break from live shows to record their second studio album.

In late 2013, Skyharbor announced that Nikhil Rufus Raj had amicably left the group, and was replaced by Goddess Gagged bassist Krishna Jhaveri, who had filled in on bass for the October European/UK tour.

In June 2014, Skyharbor announced that they would be crowd-funding the production of their second album with PledgeMusic,[5] and working with Australian producer Forrester Savell (Karnivool, The Butterfly Effect, Dead Letter Circus) as well as animator Jess Cope (Steven Wilson, Devin Townsend) for a music video.

Skyharbor released their second album Guiding Lights worldwide via Basick Records on 10 November 2014 and followed it up with a launch tour in India, capping off with a headline set at the NH7 Weekender festival, 3 years after making their live debut opening the same stage.

In March 2015, the band embarked on an extensive 29-date Europe and UK co-headlining tour with Australian post-rock outfit sleepmakeswaves and Polish group Tides From Nebula.

On Sunshine Dust, Eric Emery employed largely lead-focused clean singing but was more generous in his use of harsh vocals, as evident on the lead single 'Dissent'.