The Eleventh Hour is considered a return to Jars of Clay's original sound, though in truth it bore stylistic similarities to all three of the albums preceding it, and continued the trend of favoring poetic lyrics over straightforwardly "Christian" lyrics (with lead single "I Need You" being a notable exception, reflecting a trend toward more direct and simplistic "worship songs" that had become popular in Christian music at around the start of the 21st century).

The album was recorded in the band's own Sputnik Studio, and they self-produced it in addition to doing all of the photography and artwork on their own, even down to using the programs to design the cover.

The album's tour was later recorded and released as a DVD known as 11Live, which featured the same cover artwork as The Eleventh Hour.

The Essential Jars of Clay features four songs from The Eleventh Hour which are the singles "I Need You", "Fly" and "Revolution" and the album's track "Silence".

The album cover of The Eleventh Hour is a photograph of Seattle taken by Dan Haseltine from a hotel window looking down the Pike Place Market.