A phenomenological approach is applied to explore signatures of disordered charge stripes and antiphase spin domains in single-particle properties of the high-temperature superconductors. Stripe phases are shown to explain many experimentally observed unusual features measured in angle-resolved photoemission and optical spectroscopy. It is argued that disordered and fluctuating stripe phases are a common feature of high-temperature superconductors, supported by the additional evidence from neutron scattering and NMR.