Originally rising from the ashes of angular D.C. punk band Smart Went Crazy, Beauty Pill transformed over the years from a post-rock band with unconventional instrumentation to a genre-defying project shaped around the songwriting and conceptual ideas of founding member Chad Clark. After an active time in the early 2000s, the band was semi-dormant for many years before returning in 2015 with their critically lauded sophomore album Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are. The group grew more experimental from there, infusing their sound with electronics, symphonic elements, and lyrics centered around sharp social critiques on EP releases like 2020's Please Advise and 2021's Instant Night.

After the 1998 breakup of Smart Went Crazy, the band's two songwriters, Chad Clark and Abram Goodrich, quickly regrouped as Beauty Pill. They were joined by vocalist Joanne Gholl and existed primarily as a recording project for their first few years. Beauty Pill's first release came with 2001 EP The Cigarette Girl from the Future, a collection of pop songs and experimental recordings. This trio version of the band would only play a single show, and after the release of the EP Beauty Pill, they slowly transitioned from a studio-only project into a more stable live group. Both Goodrich and Gholl exited the project and Clark enlisted an entirely new lineup of vocalist Rachel Burke, drummer Ryan Nelson, bassist Basla Andolsun, and guitarist Drew Doucette. The new version of the band released a second EP, You Are Right to Be Afraid, in 2003 and followed it with their debut full-length album The Unsustainable Lifestyle in 2004. The band toured for the first time in support of these releases, with Burke replaced by vocalist/violinist Jean Cook, and Nelson by new drummer and ex-Smart Went Crazy member Devin Ocampo. Clark was diagnosed with a rare and potentially deadly heart condition in 2007, and had to undergo multiple open-heart surgeries to combat the life-threatening illness. He was able to successfully recover but Beauty Pill was effectively put on hold while he recuperated. In 2011, the band was commissioned by a D.C. museum to record music in their public space. The recordings made in this living exhibit became 2015's Beauty Pill Describes Things as They Are, the first new album from the band in 11 years. The material found Beauty Pill incorporating even more of the electronic elements Clark had been experimenting with before his illness and was well-received by press and fans alike. In 2018, Cook left and was replaced by Erin Nelson. 2020 saw both the release of archived soundtrack recordings in the form of the full-length album Sorry You're Here, as well as Please Advise, an EP of completely new material. Beauty Pill's sound was growing increasingly adventurous with these releases, and they continued experimenting with new sounds on their 2021 EP Instant Night. Over the course of just four tracks, Instant Night included songs marked by woodwinds, acid-jazz bass synth, programmed electronic drums, and live horn arrangements. In 2023, archival collection Blue Period was released. This extensive double album included all of Beauty Pill's output from 2003 to 2005, with remastered versions of material from You Are Right to Be Afraid and The Unsustainable Lifestyle, as well as an abundance of previously unreleased demos, alternate versions, and studio outtakes. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi