oh rad, i was actually wondering if segmenting backgrounds like that was something people did! It seems like the best way to handle a well thought out, parallaxing background.
I think that in between method seems like a good solution for what i'm going for. I'm working with sprites, but I want them textured onto models to make animation/lighting easier (and hopefully come out with an interesting looking aesthetic lol) and that sounds like it'd work better with what you've suggested. I might still try to mess around with tiled just to see how that goes though, no harm in at least seeing if it makes sense for what i'm doing.
Thanks for the advice, hope your project's going well so far!