Its origins have even been traced to the 1950s in the city of Hof, when musicians Christian Burchard and Dieter Serfas met at the age of 10.

"[1][2] In 1969, the band was founded by multi-instrumentalist Christian Burchard (drums, vibraphone, santur, keyboard) and Edgar Hofmann (saxophone, flutes).

To date, more than 400 musicians have played with the collective, some on multiple occasions, such as Charlie Mariano, Trilok Gurtu, Ramesh Shotham, Marty Cook, Yuri Parfenov, Allan Praskin, X.Nie, Nick McCarthy, Monty Waters and Mal Waldron.

Longtime members have been Edgar Hofmann (sax, violin), Dieter Serfas (drums), Roman Bunka (guitar, oud), Uve Müllrich (bass), Michael Wehmeyer (keyboard), Chris Karrer (guitar, oud, violin, sax), Lothar Stahl (marimba, drums), and Jens Polheide (bass, flute).

Since then, his daughter Marja Burchard (drums, vibraphone, vocals, trombone, keyboard), who grew up with the band, has been leading Embryo.