The band currently consists of Jim Ward (vocals, guitar) and Matt Miller (bass), who are touring as a three-piece with rotating session drummers.

Sparta's music has been described by Pitchfork as "anxious, epic guitar rock",[4] and by SPIN Magazine as having "a reliably cathartic and emotionally charged presence".

[9] True to their roots, the opening song, "Cut Your Ribbon", was described as "splintering, power-hungry rock",[9] and other tracks such as "Cataract", "Glasshouse Tarot" and "Mye" were noted for their emotion and "absurdly exuberant melody".

Jeremy was at the time the sound manipulator for The Mars Volta, created by former At the Drive-In bandmates Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López, and frontman of De Facto.

The band resumed writing new material, and on March 19, 2004 recorded a live album at La Zona Rosa.

Videos for the songs "Cut Your Ribbon", "Mye", and "La Cerca" can be found online, recorded by the music television station Fuse TV.

Despite popular belief, none of the tracks are fueled by the loss of Jeremy Ward (Jim's cousin and sound manipulator for the Mars Volta).

Tracks such as "Death in the Family" and "Travel by Bloodline" stem from other personal losses, such as Jim Ward's grandfather and a close friend.

They played three songs off the upcoming album: "Crawl", "Weather The Storm", and the single "Taking Back Control".

On February 19, 2007, the band played a free concert with Lydia Vance in Las Vegas for the XPOZ Coalition, an anti-smoking organization.

The film, the soundtrack for which is performed by Sparta, is about drummer Hajjar's early life, set during the Lebanese civil war of 1975–1990.

Hajjar fled at the age of five to the United States, settling in the sprawling west Texas border town of El Paso.

[12] In January 2009, when asked if a return to Sparta was foreseeable, Ward stated that he has no plans to reunite with his bandmates: "I don't right now, no.

[14] They performed on November 17 and 18 at Tricky Falls, the newly renovated venue co-owned by frontman Jim Ward.

However, days before the tour start in March 2016, it was announced that Ward had been replaced in the band by his former Sparta bandmate Keeley Davis.

On November 13, 2017 a new line-up was announced, consisting of returning members Ward, Matt Miller and Gabriel Gonzalez, along with former Cursive drummer Cully Symington.

The band also shared information on a US tour to start in San Francisco on April 23, 2020 – though this was ultimately cancelled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sparta played their first live shows in over two years at Ward's own restaurant, Eloise, in El Paso across two nights on March 18 and 19, 2022.