Bothy Culture a result of his experiences of the early 1990s Glaswegian rave and house scenes and his experimentation with numerous types of world music. It was recorded solely by Bennett within his home studio. Bennett explained "Bothy Culture" celebrates not only his own country's Gaelic culture and music, but also the music of Islam, for which he held a long-lasting fascination due to its vocals, modes and instrumentation being "similar in emotion" to Gaelic music styles, and the music of Scandinavia, which he found to have the same heavy-beat rowdiness and "solitary sweetness" of the ceilidh music he played in his
Bothy Culture five in "The Encyclopedia of Popular Music" and called it "hugely impressive album that encompassed Bennett's multicultural approach to modern music." Neil McFayden of Folk Radio UK wrote in 2018 that ""Bothy Culture" still sounds as fresh and exciting as it did on the day of its release." To celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Bothy Culture", and the 25th anniversary of the Celtic Connections festival, arranger and conductor Greg Lawson's GRIT Orchestra, named after Bennett's final album "Grit" (2003) and containing some 100 traditional folk, classical and jazz musicians, performed the show "Bothy Culture and Beyond" at the SSE Hydro,