[1] Osibisa was the most successful and longest lived of the African-heritage bands in London, alongside such contemporaries as Assagai, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Demon Fuzz, Black Velvet, and Noir, and was largely responsible for the establishment of world music and Afro rock as a marketable genre.

In Ghana in the 1950s, Teddy Osei (saxophone), Solomon (Sol) Amarfio (drums), Mamon Shareef, and Farhan Freere (flute) played in a highlife band called The Star Gazers.

In 1964 he formed Cat's Paw, an early "world music" band that combined highlife, rock, and soul.

[2] The name Osibisa was described in lyrics, album notes and interviews as meaning "criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness" but it actually comes from "osibisaba" the Fante word for highlife.

The band spent much of the 1970s touring the world, playing to large audiences in Japan, Australasia, India, and Africa.

During this time Paul Golly (guitar) and Ghanaians Daku Adams "Potato" and Kiki Gyan were also members of the band.

[6] In 1980, Osibisa performed at a special Zimbabwean independence celebration, and in 1983 were filmed onstage at the Marquee Club in London but by this time were a distant version of the original band.

[citation needed] In the early 1990s, Osei regrouped the band, and many of their past recordings released legally on CD.

However, apart from one track included on the band's 2020 Sunshine Day: The Boyhood Sessions album, the recordings featuring Osei remain unreleased.

Artwork for many of the reissues and 1990s material onwards was put together by Frank McPartland, Andrew Buckle and the Grammy Award winning designer Rachel Gutek and her Guppy Art company.