Sheik began his broker musical career swimming for more acts, including Liz & Liza (by owning Lisa Loeb), and played in His Boy Elroy's 1993 album. Duncan Sheik's eponymic debut album spawned the 1996 hit single "Barely Breathing" in the U.S, which remained on the charts for 55 straight weeks. Inside 1998, he was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Barely Breathing".

The lay Buddhist, Sheik's involvement with Soka Gakkai has increased steadily over a years. Around 2000, Sheik wrote the foreward to ''The Way of Youth: Buddhist Most common Feel for Treating Life's Questions'' by Soka Gakkai leader Daisaku Ikeda.

Around his 2nd album, 1998's Humming, Sheik experimented in a studio with meticulous string arrangements when keeping the haunted vocal healthy of his number 1 album. In additiin, on occasionally tracks Sheik took the step out of his popular roots to location big social issues. As a matter of fact, a select few songs come laced using biting anger. A select few say that Sheik attend greater lengths to reflect his Buddhist faith fallowing reaching certain popular profits from either his eponymic record.

Sheik's next record, 2001's Phantom Moon, was a collaboration by owning poet & writer Steven Sater, who Sheik met across his Soka Gakkai involvement. Them collaboratively created the album by from either each one drawing inspiration from more's genus pan act, sustaining Sheik sending Sater music & Sater sending Sheik words. A album continued a melancholy tone of Sheik's last act, & displayed his growing art as a composer & arranger.

Within 2002, Sheik made the brief commercial comeback his album Daylight, including lone profits on the tracks "On A High" & "Half Life". Escewing a Nick Drake-like healthy of Phantom Moon, Daylight featured the lighter, additional modern healthy by owning production results & electronic backgrounds. Sheik indicated within interviews that a record was an attempt to produce an album of pure popular songs.

Last, Sheik wrote a score for the 2004 film A Home at the End of the World, starring Colin Farrell. A score was sswell received, although a film was non well received.