Ride's members met while attending art schools in Oxfordshire, and gathered the pieces of their eventual sound from the noisy groups that would come through town. My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth proved to them that feedback is an art form, while Spacemen 3 and Dinosaur Jr. demanded they show their distortion pedals no mercy. The Cure and The Smiths taught them how to marry classic pop songwriting with forward-thinking guitar textures.