Speaking with Rolling Stone, Coheed and Cambria founder, Claudio Sanchez, explained the background to this song: "My wife has helped pull me from the throes of an identity crisis," he said. "While I can barely comprehend the distance of our planetary neighbor, let alone the ever expanding universe, my love for her knows no distance."

The song was written around the time Claudio Sanchez's wife, Chondra Echert, was about to give birth to their first child, Atlas. He explained to TeamRock: "My wife and I collaborate on a ton of things together – a lot of the comic books and the lyrics and music that I write – and now here we were about to collaborate on a life together, and it was just a really special moment that framed her in a way that made me want to express myself in a song for her. So that's basically what I did, and Here to Mars is me trying to encapsulate that emotion."

"I wanted the song to feel epic and explosive, and distant like a journey. Some people might get literal with it and say, 'You only love your wife to Mars? But that's only the neighboring planet of our solar system – it's not really that far away!' But to me, Mars might as well be the other end of the universe because I'm never going there. Maybe I should just do a series of love songs about the solar system next time out? Ha ha!"