Nicola Stilo was born in Naples in 1956 and began performing in 1974. The following year he joined Rome's Folkstudio scene as a member of the Folk Magic Band, an eighteen-piece ensemble drawn from the same circle of young musicians who had grown up around the club, recording Jazz Al Folkstudio there in June 1976. He has been described as one of the first Italian flutists to commit himself exclusively to jazz, at a time when the instrument had almost no dedicated specialists in the country's jazz scene. His identity is confirmed via Discogs artist 321053, a single unambiguous entity with no namesake collision.

Stilo's defining association began in 1979, when he started attending Chet Baker's Italian concerts and recording sessions. Baker brought him into his touring band in 1980, and Stilo remained close to him for nearly a decade, playing dates across Italy and Europe and joining a 1985 tour of Brazil. Discogs documents Stilo on flute, guitar and other instruments across more than a dozen Baker studio and live titles recorded or first released between 1980 and 1988, including the 1983 studio quartet date In Your Own Sweet Way and the Live At Le Dreher Club 1980 recordings, alongside decades of later reissues and archival releases still crediting him. His most personal credit within that partnership came on Chet On Poetry (1989, Novus/RCA), recorded at Rome's Forum Studios during Baker's final months: rather than a sideman credit alone, Stilo is listed as arranger and conductor as well as multi-instrumentalist, on an album that also carries backing vocals from Carla Marcotulli and drums from Roberto Gatto. Stilo also appears in the 1988 documentary Let's Get Lost. Baker died in May 1988; by Stilo's own account, he gave up heroin in the aftermath.

Stilo's own leader catalog opens with two 1995 dates for Splasc(h) Records: Flute Connection, co-led with fellow Italian flutist Stefano Benini, and Errata Corrige, a quartet session whose guest list includes Chet Baker himself on trumpet across two tracks, one of Baker's last studio appearances before his death, alongside pianist Danilo Rea, bassist Furio Di Castri, drummer Roberto Gatto and vocalist Carla Marcotulli. After Baker's death, Stilo built a second musical identity centered on Brazilian music: Duets (recorded 1999, released worldwide 2005) paired him with Brazilian guitarist and singer Toninho Horta for ten tracks split between jazz standards and originals, and Vira Vida (2003) carried that partnership into a mostly original Brazilian-songbook album whose sleeve credits a large supporting cast, including guest appearances from Rita Marcotulli and Stefano Di Battista, independently confirmed at the Discogs extraartists level, and Stefano Bollani, credited on the sleeve. His most recent leader album, Immagini (2006, Alfa Music), closed out that run.

Beyond Baker and his own catalog, Stilo built a long sideman career: on Rita Marcotulli's 1982 quartet debut Summer, on two Luca Flores albums spanning 1987 to 1993, on Nicola Conte's 2004 Blue Note album Other Directions and its companion A Time For Spring, on Stefano Di Battista's 2007 Blue Note date Trouble Shootin', on two albums by the voice-and-double-bass duo Musica Nuda, on Eddy Palermo's Brazilian-repertoire album Brincando Entre Amigos (2005), and, as recently as 2021, on a single track of guitarist Marco Sinopoli's Extradiction album Chromatic Landscape. Italian Wikipedia's biography of Stilo also names Roland Kirk and Philip Catherine among his career collaborators; neither claim could be matched to a specific Discogs-indexed recording and both are stated here as bio-only.

Stilo's playing sits at the intersection of two distinct jazz identities. The first is defined by his near-decade alongside Chet Baker: a lyrical, ballad-centered flute and guitar voice suited to Baker's own spare, vocalized trumpet style, most fully expressed on Chet On Poetry, where Stilo moved from sideman into arranger and conductor. The second, which took shape after Baker's death, is built on Brazilian music: Duets and Vira Vida, both made with Toninho Horta, work in a bossa-adjacent, largely acoustic idiom that Discogs itself tags with the styles Bossa Nova and Fusion alongside Jazz and Latin. His flute has also made him a first-call session voice across other artists' Italian jazz projects, from Nicola Conte's club-jazz productions to Stefano Di Battista's hard-bop-leaning Trouble Shootin', a range that reflects his standing as one of Italy's earliest jazz-specialist flutists rather than a single stylistic lane.