Agostino Marangolo was born in Catania, Sicily, on June 25, 1953, into a family of musicians. His brother Antonio Marangolo is a saxophonist, and Agostino grew up in Acireale before moving to Rome to continue his musical studies. He formed his first group, Flea on the Honey, in 1969, and went on to play with Etna, whose self-titled album appeared in 1975.

In the mid-1970s he replaced Walter Martino as the drummer of Goblin, the band best known for the horror and thriller scores of Dario Argento. He is credited on one track of the Profondo Rosso score (1975) and on the band's own Roller (1976), then on Suspiria (1977), Zombi (1978), Patrick (1979), Contamination and Buio Omega (1980), among other soundtracks, and he stayed until 1980. That work is progressive rock and film music, not jazz, and it is the reason most listeners know his name. His jazz-side career ran alongside it from the start. In 1976 he recorded several tracks with the Neapolitan band Napoli Centrale, led by the saxophonist James Senese, which became part of their second album, Mattanza (Ricordi, 1976), a record that Discogs files under the jazz-funk and jazz-rock styles.

From 1979 he was the drummer on the early records of Pino Daniele, the Neapolitan singer and guitarist whose music draws on blues, jazz, rock and the song tradition of Naples. Marangolo is credited on Pino Daniele (1979), Nero a metà (1980) and Musicante (1984), and he toured with Daniele, including the Sciò live tour of 1984 and the Ricomincio da 30 concerts of 2008. In 1981 the bassist Giovanni Tommaso formed New Perigeo, a short-lived successor to his jazz-rock band Perigeo, with Danilo Rea on piano and keyboards, Maurizio Giammarco on saxophone and flute, the guitarist Carlo Pennisi and Marangolo on drums. The band lasted about eighteen months and recorded Effetto amore (RCA, 1981), tagged jazz-rock and fusion on Discogs, plus a share of the mini-album Q Concert with Rino Gaetano and Riccardo Cocciante.

Through the 1980s and 1990s he also worked as a pop and songwriter session drummer, with credits on records by Mike Francis, Riccardo Cocciante, Renato Zero, Nino Buonocore, Paola Turci, Angelo Branduardi, Edoardo Bennato and many others. In the early 1990s he joined the reconstituted Napoli Centrale with James Senese, and he is credited on tracks of Jesceallah (1992) and 'Ngazzate nire (1994). Discogs files the first under jazz-rock and soul-jazz and the second under fusion.

His own album came late. Day By Day (Distribuzione Deltavideo, 2001) is an eleven-track set of fusion and jazz-funk on which he plays drums, percussion, drum loops and, on one piece, bass, and shares composing credits with his brother Antonio, Carlo Pennisi and Massimo Caruso. Antonio plays saxophone on most of the pieces, and the other players are a rotating cast of Italian jazz and fusion musicians: Stefano Di Battista (alto saxophone on two tracks), Pippo Matino, Lorenzo Feliciati, Fabio Pignatelli and Gigi De Rienzo on bass, the guitarist Rocco Zifarelli, and Carlo Pennisi and Pierpaolo Principato on keyboards. A live version of the title piece, with Marangolo on drums, appears on the compilation Live in Toscana Jazz 2002. He then drummed on James Senese's jazz-funk album Passpartuù (2003), on a track of Feliciati's Upon My Head (2004) and on two tracks of Napoli Centrale's 'O sanghe (2016).

Goblin reunions kept his name in front of rock audiences: the BackToTheGoblin2005 album, the group's 2009 European concerts, and Four of a Kind (2015). Goblin's English Wikipedia entry reports that he and Fabio Pignatelli left the band in August 2024 after internal disagreements.

Marangolo is a rock-trained drummer whose jazz credits sit mostly in the fusion and jazz-funk lane. The records that carry them, Mattanza, Effetto amore, Jesceallah, Passpartuù and his own Day By Day, belong to the Neapolitan and Roman jazz-rock scene of Napoli Centrale, Perigeo and James Senese, where a hard-hitting backbeat drummer fits as naturally as a swing one. He is also a composer and programmer: he shares writing credit on the title piece of Day By Day with Antonio Marangolo and Massimo Caruso, is the sole credited writer of "Jaz no Jaz," and layered drum loops and programming over live playing. The credits of that album list his kit as Pearl drums, Sabian cymbals and Evans heads.

The bulk of his recording career is not jazz. It is horror-film progressive rock with Goblin and pop and songwriter sessions across four decades, which is why he appears here as a crossover figure with a real, continuing fusion thread rather than as a jazz drummer by trade. Neapolitan blues and jazz-funk, through Pino Daniele and Napoli Centrale, is the thread that joins the two halves.