The idea started with two words: "ambient" and "country". For the members of SUSS (Bob Holmes, Pat Irwin, Jonathan Gregg, and Gary Leib), the genre of "ambient country", which they are often attributed to creating, has been hiding in plain sight for decades. The inspirations for SUSS's music lie in albums as diverse as Brian Eno's and Daniel Lanois's "Apollo Atmospheres" and Ry Cooder's "Paris, Texas" soundtrack. The listener can even trace the melancholic, high lonesome sprawl of these artists back to Hank Williams.

Their first independent release was 2018's Ghost Box followed by later that year by Northern Spy Records Ghost Box (Expanded) which opened the artists up to a much wider audience. The new release was described by Pitchfork magazine as "a vivid landscape where mellifluous tones foster the mystery and magic of a fabled landscape."

2019 saw the release of High Line (Northern Spy Records) , an album that made it on to many of the Top Ten Ambient album lists of that year, followed with a collection of outtakes and B-Sides called High Line - B Sides. 2020 saw the release of the highly acclaimed Promise album that landed them once again on many year-end Top 10 lists.