Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie met in Austin, TX in 1990 when they were both college students.  McBride had a radio show on the college station and Wiltzie did live sound for local bands like Ed Hall as well as recording (ultimately he would be behind the desk for Bedhead).  A mutual interest in music ("When you're at a party in 1990 and you attempt to put on Eric Satie and everyone just scowls at you - Brian simply smiled" Wiltzie told XLR8R in 2003) and obsession with Twin Peaks (song titles are rife with Lynchiana) motivated the two to work together.

Sedimental released the debut Stars of the Lid CD, Music for Nitrous Oxide, in 1995. Recorded on four track tape deck, Lucy Cage wrote in The Lizard that; "It's alarming how the notes they employ are piercingly physical; ringing tones that rise up and out of the speakers like alien tendrils; deep deep bass burrs that shake the air and the walls and frighten the neighbors."  We took notice at kranky immediately.  A year and a half later, Sedimental released a limited edition LP called <I>Gravitational Pull vs The Desire for An Aquatic Life </I>which kranky would release later with extra music on compact disc).

Stars of the Lid played out, with visual artist Luke Savisky providing visuals that often took four film projectors to realize and bathed the band in color and motion.  Spliced together from found film and library stock, Savisky's contribution to the band's live happenings is never the same two nights in a row and is, in a fundamental sense, an improvised light environment.  Bill Meyer stated in The Chicago Reader that "I've never experienced anything more psychedelic than the vertiginous swirl of sound and sight".

Christopher Willits has been instrumental in redefining the guitar in the
digital age. Using custom-built software, Willits morphs his guitar
playing into warm folded rhythms of texture and melody. Named "the center
cell of a complex indie rock-avant-garde-electronic art Venn diagram in
the Bay Area" (San Francisco Bay Guardian), and "The Picasso of Sound"
(Tokafi Magazine), Willits defies genre distinctions while still defining
a sound of his own. His guitar lines fold and weave into each other
creating complex patterns of interlocking rhythm, melody, and texture.