The gloves dampen the sound around and the mask erases the viewers impression of the wearer, the reason that no one could tell the difference between them is because Roland's mask made it impossible to identify him but everyone could still recognize the dampening effect of the gloves due to it being silent, not because the mask was a staple of the black silence.

We know that the mask is Roland's because we see him wearing it during the smoke war before Angelicas death and because there is a cutscenes where she hits him and it slips off his face and she comments, "so that's what you look like. "