Starling Electric formed in Michigan as the initial studio venture of Traverse City native Caleb Dillon, a multi-instrumentalist and dedicated home recordist whose affinity for melodic 1960s and 1970s pop and art rock generated abundant songs. Those recordings drew together the first configuration of the group, with John Fossum on drums alongside guitarists Jason DeCamillis and Christian Blackmore Anderson. Relocating operations to Ann Arbor, the four-piece prepared its first album while cultivating a dynamic live presence that showcased their collective versatility as multi-instrumentalists equally adept at unleashing post-rock noise storms or reproducing the stacked vocal arrangements reminiscent of Pet Sounds.
Self-released in summer 2006, the album Clouded Staircase earned both local and wider recognition, drawing endorsements from Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies and Big Star as well as Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard, who subsequently asked the band to support several dates on his East Coast tour that year. Bar/None Records signed the quartet the next year and issued Clouded Staircase on a national scale in 2008. Tracks from the debut also appeared in the 2009 Harrison Ford film Crossing Over and the well-regarded independent feature Letting Go.
In the ensuing period DeCamillis exited, prompting the addition of Ben Collins and Aaron Diehl, both formerly of the indie pop trio Lightning Love. During the same stretch the band launched a fuzz-pop side project called the Boys Themselves, with guitarist Christian Blackmore Anderson at the helm and core members Caleb Dillon and John Fossum handling bass and drums. The revised Starling Electric lineup kept working on new material and surfaced in spring 2016 with the sophomore album Electric Company.
