See below for a simple example of how to use a Thread to do some time intensive stuff in a background process.

public async void ProcessDataAsync()
{
    // Start the time intensive method
    Thread t = new Thread(TimeintensiveMethod);

    // Control returns here before TimeintensiveMethod returns
    Console.WriteLine("You can read this while TimeintensiveMethod is still running.");
}

private void TimeintensiveMethod()
{
    Console.WriteLine("Start TimeintensiveMethod.");

    // Do some time intensive calculations...
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(@"PATH_TO_SOME_FILE"))
    {
        string v = reader.ReadToEnd();

        for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            v.GetHashCode();
    }
    Console.WriteLine("End TimeintensiveMethod.");
}

As you can see we can not return a value from our TimeIntensiveMethod because Thread expects a void Method as its parameter.

To get a return value from a Thread use either an event or the following:

int ret;
Thread t= new Thread(() => 
{
    Console.WriteLine("Start TimeintensiveMethod.");

    // Do some time intensive calculations...
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(file))
    {
        string s = reader.ReadToEnd();

        for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
            s.GetHashCode();
    }
    Console.WriteLine("End TimeintensiveMethod.");

    // return something to demonstrate the coolness of await-async
    ret = new Random().Next(100);
});

t.Start();
t.Join(1000);
Console.Writeline("Count: " + ret);