[1] The band has had a diverse range of musical influences over time, including the percussive industrial Stahlwerksynfonie (1981) then to a more synth-pop styled Volle Kraft voraus!

In some interviews, the band stated that Visconti's 1969 film The Damned, a depiction of the fictitious German industrial dynasty of the Essenbecks, was the main inspiration.

The initial sound on the band's first album Stahlwerksynfonie, showed a mix of industry factory noises with metallic percussion and real instruments.

In the mid 1980s, Jurgen Engler went to work on his record label Atom-H, signing bands who played mainly thrash metal and hardcore punk.

Die Krupps were key in the Europe wide progression of electronic body music, culminating with the collaboration in 1989 with British band Nitzer Ebb.

Combining electronic and metal elements was a pioneering move that led to a number of other bands using the electronic/metal combo as a template in keeping with a deeper industrial sound.

The band continued in this vein through the 1990s, releasing II – The Final Option (with the album cover influenced by Deep Purple's Machine Head) in 1993.

"The Great Divide", "5 Millionen" with two cover songs "Ich bin ein Ausländer" by Pop Will Eat Itself and "Der Amboss" by Visage (which was originally released two years before as a B-side to the re-release of Wahre Arbeit, wahrer Lohn).

Additionally in 2019, Jürgen Engler formed Die Klute, an industrial metal supergroup featuring Dino Cazares (Fear Factory) and Claus Larsen (Leæther Strip).