Luminous Orange was originally conceived as a four-piece girl band by Rie Takeuchi in 1992 after being inspired by a
Pale Saints concert. The group has often been categorized as alternative,
dream pop, and
shoegaze, although Takeuchi has expressed distate for labeling her music with genres. Because of their appearance on
Cornelius' label Luminous Orange has also been considered as
Shibuya-kei. In 1998, the band released the
Puppy Dog Mail EP on former Pale Saints member
Ian Masters' label Friendly Science Enregisterments. The title track from the EP subsequently appeared on a compilation released by Trattoria. That same year, Takeuchi made an appearance on Friendly Science Orchestra's
Miniature Album, which was awarded Single of the Week by
NME. The following year, Luminous Orange released the
mini album Luminousorangesuperplastic, which drew praise from of
Number Girl. The band went on to release a
maxi single in 2000 under the similar title of
Luminousorangesugarplastic. By 2002, the band had become Takeuchi's solo project Hiroko Kawakami of the band Caucus cited the album as one of the records which influenced her. In 2004, Luminous Orange played at the
CMJ Music Marathon in New York. The band returned to America in 2006, playing at
SXSW in Austin, Texas. They performed again at the festival the following year. Luminous Orange's next album,
Sakura Swirl, was released in 2007. In addition to being released in Japan, it also had distribution in America, Europe and Australia. The album featured contributions from , Hiroyuki Tateyama, Noritoshi Esaki and M. Fujii. Ian Masters provided lyrics as well as vocals and
musical saw to the track "Silver Kiss". Masters joined Luminous Orange at two of their concerts that same year. That July, the band played two concerts in Taiwan, including an appearance at the
Formoz Festival. In 2009, Luminous Orange released the compilation album
Best of Luminous Orange on . Takeuchi explained that the label had asked about recording a new album but as Inazawa was busy with
Vola and the Oriental Machine, they weren't in a position to do so. She thus saw an opportunity to re-release earlier tracks that had become more difficult to obtain. The following year saw the release of
Songs of Innocence, Luminous Orange's first original album in about two years. Guest musicians on the record included Takehito Kono of , , Ahito Inazawa,
Christopher McGuire and Katsuya Yanagawa. The songs on the album were noted as combining "the overwhelming feeling of feedback and thunderous roaring, the persuasive and cool rhythms with beautiful melodies" as well as having odd time signatures and "mysterious melody lines with unexpected developments." Luminous Orange released the
digital single "Tigerlily Mixolydian" in 2013. The next year, the band released their seventh studio album,
Soar, Kiss The Moon, on Parallelogram. The album was described as incorporating
jazz and
samba rhythms as well as "elements of
postrock and
math rock". Among the guests on the album were members of the Yoshida Yohei Group, who contributed
wind instrument parts. ==Members==