The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders.

While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists Gilbert and George, they see "two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life.

[8] Early Kraftwerk line-ups from 1970 to 1974 fluctuated, as Hütter and Schneider worked with around a half-dozen other musicians during the preparations for and the recording of three albums and sporadic live appearances, including guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who left to form Neu!.

Hütter, who left the band for eight months to focus on completing his university studies, played synthesizer and keyboards (including Farfisa organ and electric piano).

After the commercial success of Autobahn in the US, where it peaked at number 5 in the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes,[11] Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers.

Even though Radio-Activity was less commercially successful than Autobahn in the UK and United States, the album served to open up the European market for Kraftwerk, earning them a gold disc in France.

Kraftwerk returned to live performance with the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it along on the road.

They also made greater use of live visuals including back-projected slides and films synchronized with the music as the technology developed, the use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set, and the use of replica mannequins of themselves to perform on stage during the song "The Robots".

After the physically demanding Computer World tour, Ralf Hütter had been looking for forms of exercise that fitted in with the image of Kraftwerk; subsequently he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling.

In late 1991, long-time Kling Klang Studio sound engineer Henning Schmitz was brought in to finish the remainder of the tour and to complete a new version of the quartet that remained active until 2008.

In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany.

"[24] Kraftwerk's headline set at Global Gathering in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 November was cancelled moments before it was scheduled to begin, due to Fritz Hilpert experiencing a medical emergency.

Initiated by Klaus Biesenbach, the Museum of Modern Art of New York organized an exhibit titled Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where the band performed their studio discography from Autobahn to Tour de France over the course of eight days to sell-out crowds.

[36] In 2014, Kraftwerk brought their four-night, 3D Catalogue tour to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles,[37] and at NYC's United Palace Theatre.

[40] In 2015, Ralf Hütter, being told that the Tour de France would be starting that year in the nearby Dutch city of Utrecht, decided that Kraftwerk would perform during the "Grand Départ".

[43] On 20 July 2018, at a concert in Stuttgart, German astronaut Alexander Gerst performed "Spacelab" with the band while aboard the International Space Station, joining via a live video link.

On 3 July 2020, the German-language versions of Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World, Techno Pop and The Mix, alongside 3-D The Catalogue, were released worldwide on streaming services for the first time.

[49] It includes remixed tracks taken from singles released 1991, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007, plus the previously unreleased "Non Stop", a version of "Musique Non-Stop" used as a jingle by MTV Europe beginning in 1993.

[52] With the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary, the Remixes compilation album came out on compact disc and vinyl for the first time in addition.

[58] On 27 July 2024, at the Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba, Kraftwerk played a cover version of another artist's work for the first time: "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in 2023.

This trait can be traced back to the group's roots in the first experimental Krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but, significantly, it has continued to be a part of its playing even as it makes ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in its performances.

[81] Kraftwerk used a custom-built vocoder on their albums Ralf und Florian and Autobahn; the device was constructed by engineers P. Leunig and K. Obermayer of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig.

[84] The band first performed in public with this device in 1973, on the television program Aspekte (on the all-German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), where it was played by Wolfgang Flür.

[86] On the Radio-Activity tour in 1976 Kraftwerk tested out an experimental light-beam-activated drum cage allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm and hand movements.

[83] The same year Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider commissioned Bonn-based "Synthesizerstudio Bonn, Matten & Wiechers" to design and build the Synthanorma Sequenzer with Intervallomat, a 4×8 / 2×16 / 1×32 step-sequencer system with some features that commercial products couldn't provide at that time.

According to Fritz Hilpert, "the mobility of music technology and the reliability of the notebooks and software have greatly simplified the realization of complex touring setups: we generate all sounds on the laptops in real time and manipulate them with controller maps.

"[88] The band is also known for being notoriously reclusive, providing rare and enigmatic interviews, using life-size mannequins and robots while conducting official photo shoots, refusing to answer fanmail and barring visitors from the Kling Klang Studio, the precise location of which they used to keep secret.

[61] Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, purchased the vocoder used by Kraftwerk in their early albums, comparing it to owning "the guitar Jimi Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'".

[10] Techno was created by three musicians from Detroit, often referred to as the 'Belleville three' (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May), who fused the repetitive melodies of Kraftwerk with funk rhythms.

The worldwide hit "Heart of Glass" turned radically from an initial reggae-flavoured style to its distinctive electronic sound in order to imitate the technological approach of Kraftwerk's albums and adapt it to a disco concept.