In the summer of 1996, Philip Gibbs found his sister's old three quarter sized nylon string guitar at the bottom of a hallway closet and started playing, continuing to do so every day since. After learning a few chords and then a few songs, soon Phil was writing songs of his own and playing them in coffee shops in his native Austin, Texas, starting in the now defunct Rio Grand Coffee Shop in the West Campus area of the University of Texas. Later, in the Spring of 1998, he boarded the S.S. Universe Explorer, a floating university that took him throughout South America, Africa and Asia.

Philip Gibbs was born and raised in Austin, Texas. He began playing and singing in his late teens in coffeehouses and bars around town and after college moved to New York where he continued playing music, recording his first self-produced disc called Digging in the Bottom of Mines, a country record with a Brooklyn combo. He then moved to Nashville to play for a year, before returning home to Austin in 2001. For four years, Philip worked odd jobs and played as much music as possible all over the state with various groups and duos and as a solo acoustic act. In 2001, he produced his own album, Another Place to Disappear, with his traveling band, The Rounders, which led to a more ambitious project in 2003, an album called Paper Crosses, produced by Stephen Doster. The rhythm section of this band had Will Sexton on bass, J.J. Johnson on drums and Philip Gibbs on acoustic guitar. Doster played a good deal of lead guitar as well.

Many months went into this project as many special guests were called in, including Ephraim Owens on trumpet, Stanley Smith of the Asylum Street Spankers on clarinet, Cole El-Saleh on piano, Erik Hokkanen on fiddle, Brian Standafer on cello, and engineer James Stevens helping out occasionally on background vocals along with Philip Gibbs, Doster and Sexton. This record was played on KGSR, KUT, KLBJ (where Philip Gibbs made half a dozen appearances on the Dudley and Bob Show) as well as other stations around the state, and led to booking many personal appearances for Philip Gibbs, including one television appearance on the local Austin affiliate of Fox. By late 2004, with hundreds of one-night gigs under his belt, Philip Gibbs began looking for new outlets, such as the theater, as well as painting. He wrote two songs, which he performed, and collaborated with Music Director Content Love Knowles on a good deal of the score. In the second act he played the Prince and the show was a hit. At this point Philip Gibbs had performed over a thousand times, and in 2005 he moved to New York again for about 10 months and played a good deal at places like the Bitter End, The Lakeside Lounge (owned and booked by Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, guitarist of Steve Earle's The Dukes) CBs Gallery and the Rockwood Music Hall, with folks like the Defibulators, James Thomas and a show with Stayton Bonner.