Snow Patrol was formed in 1994 by Gary Lightbody, Michael Morrison and Mark McClelland under the name Shrug.

[5] The band's first two studio albums: Songs for Polarbears and When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up were released in 1998 and 2001 respectively, but failed to do well commercially.

[6] Guitarist Nathan Connolly joined in 2002 and Snow Patrol was signed to Fiction and Interscope record labels in 2003.

[11] During the end of the Final Straw Tour of 2003–2005, founding bassist Mark McClelland was fired.

Sales of the album were boosted by the success of the Grammy-nominated "Chasing Cars",[14] which reached the top 10 in the UK[15] and sold 2.5 million downloads in the US.