After David Crosby's release from prison, he reunited with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash for CSN tours in 1987 and 1988.

"[5] The band toured to promote the album in 1990, but none of these songs found a permanent place in the group's repertoire, with only "House of Broken Dreams" and "Yours and Mine" being performed a handful of times beyond the 1990 outing.

He added that the songs "Yours and Mine", "Arrows", and in particular "After the Dolphin" offer genuine depth and meaning, but that the overall product is "a strangely bland album that only die-hard fans will love.

", assessing it as an embarrassingly failed attempt to marry the hippie sensibilities of Crosby, Stills & Nash's past with the glossy production values of the era in which the album was recorded.

[11] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, William Ruhlmann praised both the band's singing and the performances of the session musicians, and argued that it is only a complete lack of good songs which makes Live it Up the weakest Crosby, Stills & Nash studio album.