At the time the album was assembled, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady had stopped performing together and were on to newer endeavours.

This marked the end of Hot Tuna on the Jefferson Airplane owned Grunt Records, so a "final" compilation album was assembled.

Kaukonen and Casady reunited to perform as Hot Tuna in 1983 and moved to the Relix Records label, where they released material until the late 1990s.

On AllMusic, Lindsay Planer wrote, "Issued in 1979, Final Vinyl gathers ten tracks from Hot Tuna's first eight LPs.

Inclined parties are best served by the two-CD Best of Hot Tuna (1998), which contains a much broader and more accurate collection from the same era.