Krlic was born and raised in Yorkshire, England, and his parents instilled a love of music in the youngster, his mother being a Northern soul DJ when she was a teenager and his father a keen guitarist. A discovery of hip-hop and electronic music at 16 left its mark on the young Krlic, and he set about creating his own take on folktronica. A university course in sound and visual art opened Krlic's eyes to the possibility of making music in a whole different way, and after buying a cheap violin and cello, he quickly picked up the basics after playing along to recordings by the Dirty Three. Krlic began recording under the moniker the Haxan Cloak after he finished university in 2009, self-releasing the limited-edition Haxan Cloak CD-R. With the majority of the debut album recorded, Krlic sent a couple of tracks to his former university tutor and Sub Rosa recording artist Mikhail Karikis. Karikis' experimental work with choirs added another dimension to Krlic's already dark and eerie, soundtrack-like style, and he eventually put out the release on the London-based experimental metal label Aurora Borealis. This was followed by the cassette-only Observatory EP in 2010.

Krlic followed up with his self-titled debut full-length, The Haxan Cloak, in 2011. This was soon followed by his first live appearances, which coincided with a gradual transition from his usual drone-influenced sound to a more electronic style of production, with more frequent use of harmony. In 2012, Krlic signed to Tri-Angle Records, and went on to release a 30-minute live composition, The Men Who Parted the Sea to Devour the Water, which many people stated was a perfect aural transition from his earlier releases on Aurora Borealis to Tri-Angle. The release was followed up in 2013 with Excavation, his second-full-length effort, a record that Krlic described as being about "the soul's journey after death." The following years saw a variety of activity from the young creative artist; in 2015 he earned production credits on the Vulnicura album by Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk and Death Magic, the third record from Californian noise rock band HEALTH. He also began to apply his skills to film composition, collaborating with Atticus Ross on the scores for the 2015 movie Blackhat, 2016's Triple 9, and Steve Hoover's 2016 documentary film Almost Holy. ~ Rob Wacey & Rich Wilson