Terence Trent D'Arby (Terence Trent Howard) was born on March 15, 1962 as in Manhattan, New York, is an American singer-songwriter currently living in Milan, Italy.

In 1995 Darby released Vibrator, which largely followed Symphony or Damn in its musical direction. It was well received, but like the previous album, failed to return the artist back to the public status that he had enjoyed at the time of his first release.

During the 1990s the relations between the artist and his record label Columbia Records became strained, eventually leading to the artist's departure in 1996. This was followed by a four-year spell on Java Records, during which he recorded Terence Trent D'Arby's Solar Return, which was not released.

In 2000, he bought the rights to his unreleased album and left the record company as well as his then-management-team Lippman Entertainment.

In 2002 Maitreya moved to Milan, Italy, and began working on his next project, Angels & Vampires - Volume I. Rough demo versions of the songs were initially released through Weedshare, allowing the fans to get a glimpse of the work as it evolved.

In July 29, 2005, the fully mastered album was finally released through his webshop utilizing the mp3 format.

Sananda Maitreya was born as Terence Trent Howard. His stage name, Terence Trent D'Arby, came from taking his adoptive father's, James Benjamin Darby's, family name, and including an apostrophe.

The name Sananda Maitreya, on the other hand, purportedly came to the artist in a series of dreams, after which he considered it to reflect his present self better than his stage name.