Karimata formed in Jakarta in 1985, built around a core of Indonesian session and pop-scene veterans: keyboardist Candra Darusman (already known from the group Chaseiro), bassist Erwin Gutawa, guitarist Denny T.R., keyboardist Aminoto Kosin, and drummer Uce Haryono. For Gutawa in particular, Karimata was the true launch of his career — joining the band in 1985 was, by his own account, the beginning of his professional life in music, a partnership that ran alongside outside work as an arranger and producer before he stepped out as an independent composer after the band's initial run ended in 1991. The group's defining idea from the start was to graft Indonesian folk and traditional material onto a jazz-fusion harmonic and rhythmic language, in the vein of the American fusion and smooth-jazz records coming out of labels like GRP at the time.

The band's debut, Pasti (1985, Pro Sound), established that approach and moved quickly: within roughly a year, Karimata was invited to perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, appearing in the festival's official 1986 program as "Karimata from Indonesia" — a rare booking for an Indonesian act at one of Europe's major jazz festivals, and a strong early marker of the band's standing. The sophomore album, Lima (1987, Pro Sound), broadened the lineup's reach considerably, bringing in saxophonist Embong Rahardjo and a run of guest vocalists — Dian Pramana Poetra, the group La Storia, Lidya Noorsaid, Ramona Purba, and a young Ruth Sahanaya, later one of Indonesia's best-known pop-jazz vocalists. Drummer Uce Haryono's chair passed to Aldy and then to Budhy Haryono over these years. According to Wikipedia's citation of Rolling Stone Indonesia's "150 Greatest Indonesian Albums of All Time" list (published December 2007), both Pasti and, later, Jézz were included among the 150 — a claim this profile could not independently re-verify against the full ranked list, but which is consistent with the band's reputation as one of the era's defining Indonesian jazz-fusion acts. A third Pro Sound album, Biting, followed in 1988.

Karimata then moved to Aquarius Records for its final two releases of the decade. The 1990 album — officially titled simply Karimata, though its front cover carried the line "menampilkan Dave Valentin" ("featuring Dave Valentin") and the record is consequently still known informally among collectors as the "Dave Valentin album" — paired the band with the American jazz flutist on two tracks, "Why Not" and "Kharisma '90," a genuine cross-border jazz collaboration that stands as one of the clearest jazz credentials in the band's catalog. Jézz followed in 1991, closing out Karimata's original run; the band went on hiatus later that year.

Karimata reunited in 2016 and has remained active since, playing reunion and heritage-jazz bookings including a Mount Bromo jazz series appearance and a guest slot on the "Symphonesia Across Eras: Music 80" program. In 2024, the band released "Lintas Melawai" — a track from 1987's Lima — as a standalone single for the first time, 37 years after its original release, and performed at the Port Jazz & Culture Festival. As of this writing, current live lineups include original members Candra Darusman, Erwin Gutawa, Denny T.R., and Aminoto Kosin alongside drummer Budhy Haryono and bassist/percussionist Indro Hardjodikoro.

Karimata's sound sits squarely in 1980s Indonesian jazz-fusion: electric-piano-and-synthesizer-led arrangements, a funk-and-fusion rhythm section, and melodic writing indebted to the polished, radio-friendly fusion coming out of American labels like GRP during the same period (the band's 1990 pairing with GRP-associated flutist Dave Valentin makes that lineage explicit). What distinguishes the band within that idiom is its consistent effort to fold in Indonesian material — track titles referencing places and traditions (Kalimantan's Apokayan region, for instance, on Jézz) sit alongside gamelan-adjacent percussion textures, layered over jazz-fusion harmony and arranging. That combination, sustained across five albums and reinforced by high-profile bookings like the 1986 North Sea Jazz Festival, is the basis for the band's standing as one of the pioneering acts of Indonesian jazz fusion.