Singer and keyboardist Chris Keating told The Sun February 5, 2010 about the inspiration for this song: "It has a vague narrative relating to Lucius Cornelius Sulla who was a Roman general I was reading about at the time."

Guitarist Anand Wilder told Drowned in Sound that this was a late addition to Odd Blood. He said: "'Rome' was a song that Chris had a full demo of, and we had this other song we were going to put on the album, but I was always happier with 'Rome,' it has a great hook and almost a big band swing beat, which isn't something we've ever really done before. We were looking for uptempo, high energy songs that would be great to play live, so we threw 'Rome' on literally at the last minute."

Keating told MTV News: "That song sort of rips off certain Moroccan dance music, Syrian dance music, that my wife had on her iPod, and when she hears the song now, she sort of shakes her head like, "It's such a rip-off." She feels like she's responsible for that one."

Wilder said to Drowned In Sound: "I don't think we're going to do a video, but my ideal video for the song would be a bunch of multi-ethnic muppets having a really good time."