Not Your Kind of People World" contains a lyrical sample from the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. Both daughters of Steve Marker and Butch Vig laid down vocals on the album's title track. Finnish actress Irina Björklund performs the musical saw on "Sugar". "Beloved Freak" includes a sample of Klaus Nomi, as the group felt the artist fit Manson's lyrics about "people being an outsider, feeling like a freak, and not fitting in and trying to come to terms with that it's okay to feel like you're an outsider." KROQ-FM and MTV Buzzworthy described the sound of the
Gentle Giant "I hated making (that) last record, I hated being involved with it." In 2005, Derek Shulman reflected ""Civilian" was done with less passion than some of the other albums. As it turns out we as a band were just not good at being rock or pop stars. We would have loved to be as popular as a Genesis or Rush or Yes. In hindsight, I sometimes think that Gentle Giant was wrongfully put into the progressive rock category. Much of what we did was very clever, but we certainly didn't do these long complex tunes like Yes or Genesis did."