Edward Frazier Davis was born in South Carolina in 1989, an only child, to English conductor Andrew Davis (1944–2024) and Italian–American coloratura soprano Gianna Rolandi (1952–2021). Born with dual UK and US citizenship, he spent the first eleven years of his life in Rodmell, a small village (pop. 225 when he lived there) in East Sussex famous for being the home of Virginia Woolf, and moved with his family to Chicago in 2000. He went to Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park for his middle and high school education, where his love for music was further fostered by music teachers Sunnie Hikawa and Lucius Bell, and his love for literature was fostered by English teachers David Fuder and Bonnie Seebold. He remains in regular touch with his three closest friends from high school—mostly via memes in their group chat, but still. He came out as bisexual in 2014.

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Outside of music, Ed's hobbies and interests include walking/hiking (he walked the Camino de Santiago in 2018, which inspired him to compose his favorite piece to date—Through the Wildernesses of Worlds), writing (he originally went to Knox College to pursue a creative writing degree before switching to music), enjoying a well–mixed cocktail (his favorite is a Negroni), video games (an entire paragraph is dedicated to this below), leftist politics (ask him why he thinks the Democratic Party deserves the lion's share of blame for Harris losing to Trump), and consuming as much literature and media as he has time for in the science fiction, fantasy, and Western genres. He is unashamedly on the autism spectrum, of which one of his favorite manifestations is the many Internet research rabbit holes he has fallen through about countless eclectic interests, such as early Chinese–American history, the concept of infinity (his good friend Eugenia Cheng has written an excellent book about this), and the languages and cultures of the Celtic nations.

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Though not much of a "gamer" anymore, video games have been a big part of Ed's life ever since he received a Nintendo 64 for his seventh birthday—video game soundtracks, especially from Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, and Grant Kirkhope, played formative roles in the development of his musical taste. For a few months in 2018, he held the world record for speedrunning the 2017 game Steven Universe: Save the Light. His favorite game of all time is Red Dead Redemption II, in which he has sunk more than 3,000 hours since its 2018 release, and in 2020 he completed its 60–hour story mode in a single 14–hour livestreamed speedrun, doing so as a fundraiser to support Native American communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID–19 pandemic. He is a big fan of Rockstar Games in general, and will probably become a hermit for a few days in May 2026 when Grand Theft Auto VI is released.

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On September 10, 2008, Ed met Ari O'Grady Sánchez (they/them)​ while singing together in the Knox College Choir. They were good friends for five years before becoming a couple on September 10, 2013. They became engaged exactly two years later, and married exactly one year after that. Thus, they refer to September 10 as their "everything–versary." They live together in Old Irving Park with their dogs Leo, Hoss, and Winnie, Ari's sister Maebh ("the sibling I always wanted" —Ed), and Maebh's cats Spinks, Pissín, and Mouse.