Songfacts®:

• The second single from Anberlin's Never Take Friendship Personal album, this was inspired by the death of guitarist Joey Milligan's sister due to cancer. Frontman Stephen Christian explained during an interview with the Artisan News Service: "Right at the time the album was being written, the guitarist Joey Milligan, his sister had passed away from cancer, and she was very young. She was only 29 years old, she had a one-and-a-half year old son and it really, really, just affected the band. It felt like a giant weight was placed on our chest the entire time we were recording."
  
  Christian added that he brought in powerful experiences of his own. "So, while I was writing that song, the memory of my Grandmother and also the circumstances that were surrounding us in the studio really made it almost a necessity to write a song getting that off our chests and really showing the listener what we were going through," he said. "So, out of that was derived the song, 'The Paperthin Hymn.'"
• According to bassist Deon Rexroat, the song was originally going to be cut from the Never Take Friendship Personal album. "We started recording it and it just wasn't feeling right," he recalled to The Garden Statement. "We sat back and Joey and I discussed a verse from a song that we weren't recording that we thought maybe would fit. And once we put those two pieces together, it just worked."
  
  "Talk about going from a song where I'm like, 'I'm not even worried about this song. It's dead in the water,' to it's now one of our biggest songs that we'll ever have," Rexroat added.