Songfacts®:

• The Lumineers were already a big deal by the time their song "Scotland" was used as the theme song for The CW's historical romance series Reign, a fictionalized account of the young Mary, Queen of Scots' rise to power in the late 16th century. The show premiered in 2013, a year after the alt-folk trio released their self-titled debut album and took over the radio with their seminal hit "Ho Hey." But the band's newfound fame hadn't erased the memories of their struggles to make it in New York City (their music career finally took off after relocating to Colorado). In fact, they were on frontman Wesley Schultz's mind when he wrote the lyrics to "Scotland." He told Tunefind in 2018:
  
  "In the long pursuit of music, I remember working at a coffee shop, deli and restaurant to make the ends meet. The song was born out of this feeling that the world, the people around you, will often just not understand you: 'You could/never/feel my story/it's all you know.' It became a rally cry to try to persevere - 'I will not fold/she's in control.'"
• The title "Scotland" might seem like an on-the-nose choice for a show about the Queen of Scotland, but it was actually a coincidence, as the tune wasn't written with the series in mind and its title doesn't even show up in the lyrics. It was drummer Jeremiah Fraites' powerful drum groove that inspired the song name.
  
  Schultz explained: "The song also was special to us because it had this beautiful driving rhythm that Jer played that reminded us of battle drums, like something out of Braveheart - hence the strange name - 'Scotland.'"
• According to Reign's music supervisor, Madonna Wade-Reed, The Lumineers ended up on their radar because Brad Silberling, one of the show's executive producers, knew someone who worked with the band.
  
  "'Scotland' was a song that was being worked on and ended up being perfect for the series, so it was turned into the main title song."
  
  Throughout the series' four-season run, Wade-Reed incorporated more of The Lumineers' music into the soundtrack, including the songs "Charlie Boy," "Flowers In Your Hair" and Vitamin String Quartet's cover of "Stubborn Love."
• The Lumineers released this on their C-Sides EP in 2018.
• The Lumineers' busy touring schedule kept them out of the studio for a few years, but they did manage to release a few new tunes in the interim between their 2012 debut album and its 2016 followup, Cleopatra, including the tracks "Gale Song" and "The Hanging Tree" for the Hunger Games films.