Prior to joining the 2015 edition of Warped Tour in America, bassist Sam Douglas began to feel stressed. Initially, he presumed it to be burnout, however, upon visiting a doctor, he was prescribed anti-depressants. They made Douglas feel sick, and when Mallory Knox was on Warped Tour, he was "miserable. I didn't want to talk to anyone." The rest of the band was aware of Douglas' mental state, and subsequently held meetings in an attempt to, as vocalist Mikey Chapman describes, "try as a group to help him through."

Following the end of a UK tour in October 2015, the band began writing for Wired. The group initially had only one or two ideas. Douglas explained: "We can't write on the road, we need a rehearsal room ... [It] was daunting because it can take a couple of months to see what direction we're going in." Chapman mentioned that they were under a lot of stress and "were feeling a bit adrift." The band subsequently wrote "Giving It Up" in an hour and a half. The song gave the group "confidence and the vision to see what the record would become."

Recording took place at VADA Studios, on an estate near Birmingham with producer Dan Austin. On working with Austin, drummer Dave Rawling said: "He had so many great ideas on how to do things, and you can only hear by listening to this album like what he really does bring to the table." According to Douglas, the group wanted "something raw and live-sounding ... as if we’ve stood in front of them and played the songs to them." Instead of recording one instrument per week, the group opted to record the songs one-by-one, something that guitarist Joe Savins considered "the most influential thing we've ever done in terms of recording."

Their previous album Asymmetry was recorded by doing drums, then bass, then guitars, then vocals, taking nearly three months to accomplish. Whereas for Wired, the song-by-song approach only took a month to do. The producer had guitarist James Gillett play the songs in their entirety five times over and utilised the best take. In September 2016, Chapman revealed that the group were "starting to get mixes and stuff back now."

"In so many ways people are closer than ever before because of our online connectivity; we're wired together, and yet we're also so much more distant disconnected."

Chapman referred to Asymmetry as "almost a diagonal sidestep" from their debut Signals, whereas Wired "really feels like what we really wanted to do with that record ... tak[ing] an intentional step forward." Douglas said that a number of songs deal with anxieties and love, and the "way these are perceived online through our social media connections." According to Douglas, "Giving It Up" is about the "frustration of giving everything to something you're passionate about & truly believe in, only to have other people step in who don’t share the same passion as you and hinder your progress." The lyrics to "California" were inspired during a drive through Florida while on Warped Tour in 2015. According to Chapman, it was from his point-of-view talking to Douglas: "It was me going, 'Look I know you have this perspective right now and it's hard to pull yourself out, but if you could for five minutes you'd see this wonderful situation around you.'"

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Wikipedia