Songfacts®:

• This song is built entirely around tape loops. There are no real instruments played on this song. The loops sound like broken records with Thom Yorke singing over them.
• The alternate title for this track is "Softly Open Our Mouths In The Cold." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Rudi - Melbourne, Australia, for above 2
• In an interview with Mojo magazine February 2008, bassist Colin Greenwood admitted that he felt in retrospect that Hail To The Thief should have been pruned of a few tracks including this one: "I didn't want three or four songs on there, because I thought some of the ideas we were trying out weren't completely finished."
  
  He then went on to give "The Gloaming" as an example. "We played it live and it was cool. My brother [Jonny] sampled each of the instruments on stage, cut them up then sent them back into the mix. It was so exciting, like a live DJ show, and Thom performed off of all of that. But it wasn't the same in the studio. For me, Hail To The Thief was more of a holding process, really."
• Thom Yorke told the New Musical Express: "I don't know if you have this kind of experience in your job, but in mine, you meet people who have stopped being humans. You see, in an office, there is always an ambitious asshole who just doesn't care if he causes any disservice to anybody and who really thinks he's right to do so. Or if you meet a powerful politician, it's like an empty handshaking. The empty-eyed tornado. The Gloaming, according to me, explores this sick darkness which seems impossible to block." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France