"Staircase to the Day" was recorded at the Manor Studios, Kinnerton, Oxford and came wrapped in a colourful Roger Dean-designed gatefold sleeve depicting a winged-space monster descending onto a cosmic landscape. It kicked off with one of Gravy Train's best-known Dawn Cuts, "Starbright Starlight", anthologised in various progressive samplers and compilation albums. Marcel Coopman (again citing Vernon Johnson) described it as "a blistering piece of melodious hard-rock, that sets the standard for similarly inclined music (though not many may have heard it, of course)."