As with the rest of the Volume 1 album, "96 Quite Bitter Beings" was written by CKY frontman Deron Miller,[1] and was reportedly conceived during an afternoon on which he decided not to go to work.

[2] Speaking about the song in 2015, Miller noted that it was the last to be written for the album, and that he came up with the riff at drummer Jess Margera's house after their regular rehearsal space had been flooded.

In a review of Volume 1 for Slant Magazine, Aaron Scott proposed that the track showcases "CKY sounding their best", offering the following the description of the song: "the guitars stomp on your face, the drums alternately ride on the downbeat and hi-hat on the offbeat, while the vocals switch back and forth from matching the intensity of the riff to wooing us to sleep".

[9] Similarly, AllMusic's Bret Love identified the track as one of the highlights of the album, crediting the rotation of the song's music video on MTV for the band's early mainstream success.

[11] The track also appeared on the 2001 video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, with British music magazine NME describing it as "so intrinsically linked to 1990s skate culture".