While exploring the London independent pop scene of the early 1990s, McAlmont encountered Saul Freeman, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and programmer with whom he formed Thieves (naming the band after a work by Jean Cocteau).
Freeman was influenced predominantly by post-punk pop and rock bands (such as Scritti Politti, Associates and Cocteau Twins), and Thieves blended this with McAlmont's own gospel and soul influences to create a lush and highly textural pop music drawing equally on "black" music and "white" avant-garde indie rock.
The outspoken and photogenic McAlmont became a minor celebrity on the London indie scene, while the quieter Freeman took more of a smaller role in interviews and concentrated more heavily on Thieves' multi-layered and complex musical arrangements with producer/engineer Michael J. Ade.
With more obvious soul influences (having some melodic and atmospheric similarities to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"), it also sampled dialogue from a variety of additional pop culture touchstones including Torch Song Trilogy and Thirtysomething.
With strong expectations of a commercial breakthrough, Thieves were booked into a studio in Soho, London, to complete material for their debut album.
(This experience would help McAlmont find common ground with a subsequent collaborator, Bernard Butler, who claimed similar frustrations with Buller's production of the second Suede album Dog Man Star.)
Most recently he has been recording albums containing new versions of song standards (the first of which, Set One: You Go To My Head, was released in 2005) and working with Michael Nyman.
Over the years he has toned down the flamboyance (and, to a degree, the outright expression of his sexuality) which he displayed with Thieves in favour of a more neutral image, and has concentrated more on his abilities as a singer.
This jazz tinged house influenced track recounted the story of McAlmont hanging out with Mandalay in a villa in Ibiza during the summer of 2001 whilst they were on the island appearing at festivals and staying up late.