In this song, Marillion lead singer Steve Hogarth sings about Northern Ireland during The Troubles, imagining what will happen on Easter, and if it will be a time of atonement. Hogarth was inspired to write the song after traveling to Belfast in 1984 with his band The Europeans. He expected the worst, but had a very uplifting experience. He visited Ireland in 1986, and started writing the song in 1988 as a "message of hope for the ordinary people who have nothing to do with the troubles but have their lives inextricably interwoven with them."
An inspiration for the lyrics was the poem Easter, 1916, by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.
Steve Hogarth brought this song with him when he joined Marillion in 1989, replacing lead singer Fish. "Easter" was one of the few Marillion songs that was not written in a collaborative manner, a style Hogarth quickly acclimated to. The only section that the rest of the band worked on was the end where it goes into a 5/4 time signature. "The song was essentially written," Hogarth said in his Songfacts interview. "There might have been one or two others over the years that I've gone to the band with, but for the most part, I learned really early on that those things tend to get rejected."
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