Do Make Say Think formed in 1995-96 in Toronto, Canada. Founded by two pairs of musicians with backgrounds as various as punk, jazz and industrial metal, the group has included a number of additional musicians over the years contributing to both live shows and recordings. Core members Charles Spearin (bass, keyboards, trumpet) and Ohad Benchetrit (guitar, saxophone) first played together in high school and birthed the Toronto punk band Dead Lemmings in the late 80's; both have gone on to work in sound production and engineering in Toronto. The other founding pair, Justin Small (guitar) and James Payment (drums), are seasoned downtown rock players who've done time in a long list of bands, among them the post-industrial rock group Malhavoc. During the summer of 1995, these players came togther to score the music for a Canadian youth dramatic production, sequestering themselves in an empty school room for rehearsals. The four basic verbs 'Do', 'Make', 'Say', 'Think' adorned the walls of said classroom, and these elementary-level educational placards were adopted as a project name for the nascent group.

Over the course of the following year, Do Make Say Think confined themselves to a rehearsal room in the basement of University of Toronto radio station CIUT, joined by now-departed member Jason MacKenzie (drums, keyboards, electronics) and occasional contributor Robert Brasz (synths, treatments, effects). Equipped with an 8-track recorder, the station facilities allowed them to track various pieces as they evolved; combined with home tape experimentation, the band began to knit together scintillating instrumental soundscapes that combined rock riffing with dub and psych elements. Using the CIUT studios, as well as the studios of a local art college, their eponymous first album was completed in 1997, with all members participating in the splicing and mixing of final tracks. Far from compromising the process, this collective approach to compostion-production yielded a stunning debut record that teems with exuberant sonic texture and a brilliant blend of highly-structured and improvisational parts. Each song is finely-honed, while the record as a whole is an undeniably unified effort. The band self-released the album on CD in a run of 500; Constellation co-owners Ian & Don heard the record in early 1998, were duly blown away, and offered to re-release it as their first non-Montréal-based recording. The album came out on Constellation in the summer of that year to international acclaim.