[4] After finishing a UK tour with Johnny Nash, they had started laying down tracks for JAD Records when a disputed CBS contract with Danny Sims created tensions.

The album had a limited original release under the name The Wailers in a sleeve depicting a Zippo lighter, designed by graphic artists Rod Dyer and Bob Weiner; subsequent releases had an alternative cover designed by John Bonis, featuring an Esther Anderson portrait of Marley smoking a "spliff", and crediting the band as Bob Marley and the Wailers.

[citation needed] Bob Marley, without Peter Tosh or Bunny Wailer, moved to Sweden to work with Johnny Nash, writing and composing songs for the soundtrack to the film Want So Much to Believe.

The sessions were abandoned because of clashes with Johnny Nash and Danny Sims about the process, causing the band to not have the funds to return to Jamaica, nor could they earn money due to work-permit restrictions.

[7] The group's London road manager, Brent Clarke, recommended they get in contact with Chris Blackwell from Island Records, who had released licensed singles by The Wailers from Studio One in Great Britain.

[8] The album was recorded in 1972 at three different studios in Kingston, Jamaica – Dynamic Sound, Harry J's, and Randy's, respectively – on eight-track tape by engineer Sylvan Morris.

Muscle Shoals session guitarist Wayne Perkins, who at that time was recording a new Smith, Perkins & Smith album at the Island studio, recorded a guitar solo overdub for "Concrete Jungle", including the three-octave feedback at the end, slide guitar on "Baby We've Got a Date (Rock It Baby)",[14] and the wah-wah-laced lead on "Stir It Up".

Catch a Fire is about "the current state of urban poverty", and "Slave Driver" "connects the present to past injustices".

[6] The original 1973 vinyl release, designed by graphic artists Rod Dyer and Bob Weiner, was enclosed in a sleeve depicting a Zippo lighter.

[19][20] Shortly after the album's release, Jamaican police raided Anderson's house and seized the cover photo and film, which were never returned.

The UK leg of the tour was the last time singer Bunny Wailer performed with The Wailers; the reason for his departure was his unhappiness with the record marketing and promotion process, which made touring outside Jamaica difficult, with contributing factors being the difficulty in finding food suitable to his strict Ital diet and other cultural clashes as a Rastafari.

The Wailers performed at Paul's Mall in Boston and then three gigs in New York City, alongside Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band; in October, they opened for Sly and the Family Stone in Las Vegas.

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said "half these songs are worthy of St. John the Divine", and "Barrett brothers' bass and drums save those that aren't from limbo".

According to the review, "'Concrete Jungle' and 'Slave Driver' crackle with streetwise immediacy, while 'Kinky Reggae' and 'Stir It Up' ... revel in the music's vast capacity for good-time skanking.

Vik Iyengar from AllMusic comments that "Marley would continue to achieve great critical and commercial success during the 1970s, but Catch a Fire is one of the finest reggae albums ever.