"On Your Shore" refers to Magheragallon Beach at Enya's hometown of Gweedore, County Donegal that houses a cemetery where her grandparents are buried. Its emotional and personal connection to her childhood inspired her to write it. She explained, "When the first people lived in Gweedore, there was a sort of shelter for the fishermen ... The sea came in when there was a sermon going on and everybody was wiped out. There are a lot of stories like that, where we would start to talk about them and a song would evolve." It was written as an instrumental at first, but Enya and Nicky found lyrics suited the track better. Numerous "vocal experiments" were tried out for it, but neither suited the music, so it took the more simple form of a single lead vocal with one synthesiser. The clarinet solo was originally sung on its demo, but Nicky suggested a clarinet was the most suitable instrument that suited the vocals she used when singing it.