Angels of Light were formed by Michael Gira immediately after the 1997 termination of Swans. With an ever evolving and changing cast of musicians, the albums felt like a huge departure sonically to what had gone before, yet listening back now, they sound like an essential part of Gira's journey to Swans current iteration. Gira on Sing 'Other People (2005); "This album is different in many ways than what I've done in the past. There's no general band "sound" here. The instrumentation is arranged in each song to fit the subject. Each song is it's own world, a place for the people in the songs to live. I intentionally eschewed long instrumental passages, crescendos, that sort of thing. The songs say what they have to say, then end."