COLOR was formed in 1985 by Dynamite Tommy in Osaka. In the original line-up, Dynamite Tommy actually was the guitarist and there was a keyboardist. During 1986, all of the other original members of COLOR left the band. Afterwards Dynamite Tommy recruited some new members, two of them included Cindy and Tatsuya. Tatsuya only joined COLOR since Dynamite Tommy was impressed with his skills on the guitar. It has been noted that Tatsuya's guitar teacher was You Adachi of Dead End fame. After that, Dynamite Tommy switched from being the band's guitarist to the vocalist. COLOR went through two more line-ups in '86 and one in ' 87. In 1987, they released their first single, "Molt Grain". In 1988, Toshi and Marry joined the band. This ended up being their final and most well known line-up.
During January 1988, COLOR released their Gekitotsu!! album, which was a huge success and sold as well as X Japan's Vanishing Vision. This is when the rivalry between X Japan and COLOR started. "East" X Japan had more of a metal sound while "West" COLOR had more of a punk sound. This is also where the whole "Extasty of the East vs Free-Will of the West" (東のエクスタシー、西のフリーウィル) debate originated from. The ironic thing about the rivalry is that the members of X Japan did sing the chorus parts on many of the songs off of Gekitotsu!! Early 1989 saw the release of COLOR's Fools! Get Lucky! EP. After the success of that release, COLOR were signed to Crown Records (which later became Nippon Crown). At the end of 1989, Japan got the release of COLOR's first and only major album, Ask The Angels. Ask The Angels was originally written with Englsih lyrics and had a more violent theme. However, Crown Records wanted it to be more mainstream and made the band re-write some of the songs in Japanese and change a few lyrics in most of the songs. Also, Crown Records altered the stage persona of each member of Color to make them seem more normal.
Hiroshi "Dynamite Tommy" Tomioka – vocals (1985–1997, 2003, 2008, originally guitarist)
Tatsuya Niimi – guitar (1986–1997, 2003, 2008)
Cindy – guitar (1986–1997, 2003, 2008)
Naotaka "Marry" Nakano – bass (1988–1997)†
Toshi – drums (1988–1997, 2003, 2008)