In an interview Isaac Slade explained: “‘Rainy Zurich,’ I’ll let Joe tell most of it, but he wrote it in Zurich. It was this super cloudy, foggy day. I wrote a song that day in Zurich, too, and called it "Zurich,” and it sucked so bad. Joe’s was epic. It had this useful exploration/curiosity about life at the same time of having a real somber almost wizened Bruce Willis/Morgan Freeman grit to it."

Joe King then when on to say, “This was on tour. I was in Zurich. We had just gotten in. This was during the second record tour. I hadn’t been home for a good couple of months, and literally, I just got to my room – it was pouring outside, I’d been in a plane all day, cooped up in plane, and I was tired, but I didn’t want to just stay in the room. Another cold hotel room with modern lamps and TVs mounted on the walls. I was just so annoyed about where I was at, physically.
So being in a beautiful city, I decided to go outside and walk in the rain, and so I just got outside, and pretty much, I felt like I was the only one out in the city. It was probably eleven at night, I was walking through the alleyways and streets of Zurich, soaking wet. I got back to the room and started writing. I was missing home and missing feeling.

I felt like I was dried up and so I kind of started messing around with this song. I was also missing my honey at that time. I was wanting her and couldn’t be with her and so there’s this element of desire in the song of this need that’s unmet that I cannot meet and what that was doing to me. So I just kind of captured that night with this one."

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2012/02/the_frays_scars_stories_isaac_slade_and_joe_king_give_a_track-by-track_breakdown.php?page=3