Warne Marion Marsh was born on October 26, 1927, in Los Angeles, the son of the Hollywood cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh and the violinist Elizabeth Marsh; the silent-film actress Mae Marsh was his aunt. He studied piano from the age of ten, took up alto saxophone at North Hollywood Junior High and soon moved to tenor. As a teenager he played in a youth band and, in 1945, with a group of teenage musicians on a Hoagy Carmichael show. He enrolled at the University of Southern California that year, then served in the Army in 1946 and 1947, stationed in Virginia and New Jersey, where he first heard about Lennie Tristano, the blind Chicago-born pianist who was teaching in New York.

After his discharge Marsh went east to study with Tristano, and by 1948 he had joined Tristano's working group alongside the altoist Lee Konitz. In 1949 the sextet, with guitarist Billy Bauer, bassist Arnold Fishkin and drummers Harold Granowsky or Denzil Best, recorded for Capitol: the written pieces "Wow" and "Crosscurrent" and, without a drummer, "Intuition" and "Digression", which are widely cited as the first group free improvisations on record. The same year Marsh played on Konitz's sessions for the New Jazz label (later Prestige), contributing his own lines "Marshmallow" and "Fishin' Around". He appeared in Tristano's quintet at Birdland in 1949 and at a July 17, 1952 concert in Toronto that stayed unreleased until 1982. A December 23, 1952 quartet date in Hollywood with Hampton Hawes, bassist Joe Mondragon and Shelly Manne, issued in 1979 as Live in Hollywood, documents a stay back home.

His breakthrough as an equal partner came on June 14, 1955, when he and Konitz recorded Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh for Atlantic in New York, with Sal Mosca or Ronnie Ball on piano, Billy Bauer on guitar, bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Kenny Clarke. Marsh ended his study with Tristano that summer and returned to Los Angeles, where he formed a quintet with the second tenor Ted Brown, pianist Ronnie Ball, bassist Ben Tucker and drummer Jeff Morton. It recorded Jazz of Two Cities for Imperial on October 3 and 11, 1956. On November 26, 1956 he and Art Pepper cut a session for Contemporary, which first appeared in 1972 as part of The Way It Was!, and on December 21, 1956 the Brown quintet with Pepper made Free Wheeling for Vanguard. Music for Prancing (Mode, September 1957) paired him with bassist Red Mitchell, drummer Stan Levey and Ball; The Right Combination (Riverside) was a trio set with pianist Joe Albany and bassist Bob Whitlock recorded that fall in a Long Beach living room; and Atlantic's Warne Marsh (1958) used Paul Chambers on bass with Philly Joe Jones and Paul Motian sharing the drum chair. In February 1959 he played the Half Note in New York in a Konitz group with Bill Evans, and the same year he was one of the tenors on Lee Konitz Meets Jimmy Giuffre for Verve.

The 1960s were quiet. Recordings made in New York studios between December 1959 and September 1960 came out in 1969 as Release Record. Send Tape. on the British Wave label, and Marsh spent long stretches in California, teaching and playing occasional dates. His 1969 quartet album Ne Plus Ultra, recorded at Occidental College in Los Angeles on September 14 and October 25 with altoist Gary Foster, bassist Dave Parlato and drummer John Tirabasso, was issued by the small Revelation label and brought him back to notice. In 1972 he recorded with Foster and the pianist Clare Fischer at Fischer's home in Van Nuys, and he became a member of the first edition of Supersax, the group founded that year by Med Flory and Buddy Clark to play harmonized Charlie Parker solos for a five-man sax section. Marsh was not given solo space on the group's released recordings, but Supersax Plays Bird won the 1974 Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Group, and the exposure widened his audience.

The late 1970s and 1980s were his busiest years on record. A December 1975 Scandinavian tour with Konitz, taped at the Café Montmartre in Copenhagen with bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, yielded the Storyville Jazz Exchange albums. He recorded All Music for Nessa in Los Angeles on February 21, 1976, with pianist Lou Levy, bassist Fred Atwood and drummer Jake Hanna; played a London date with Konitz at Ronnie Scott's in May 1976; made the twin-tenor album Tenor Gladness with Lew Tabackin that October; and joined Konitz on Bill Evans's Crosscurrents, recorded in Berkeley in early 1977. In April 1980 he made duo recordings with Red Mitchell at the Fasching Club in Stockholm and, in Oslo, the album I Remember You with the vocalist Karin Krog and Mitchell. Star Highs, cut in the Netherlands on August 14, 1982 with Hank Jones, George Mraz and Mel Lewis, was an early release on the Criss Cross label, which also issued A Ballad Album (with Lou Levy, recorded April 7, 1983), Blues for a Reason with Chet Baker (September 30, 1984) and Back Home with Barry Harris and Albert Heath (March 31, 1986).

On December 18, 1987, Marsh collapsed on the bandstand at Donte's in North Hollywood in the middle of "Out of Nowhere" and died of a heart attack at 60. He was survived by his widow, Geraldyne, and two sons, K.C. and Jason, and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. His last studio session, Two Days in the Life of..., had been recorded for Interplay that June, and live and studio tapes continued to appear in later years, including Posthumous (1989). Safford Chamberlain's biography An Unsung Cat: The Life and Music of Warne Marsh was published in 2000.

Marsh took Tristano's method further than almost anyone: long, supple melodic lines that avoid stock licks and emotional effects, built over a small body of standards and bebop contrafacts that he returned to for decades. His tone was dry and grainy rather than lush, he used very little vibrato, he often played behind the beat, and he handled the top of the horn, including altissimo notes, with unusual ease. The critic Scott Yanow has noted more fire in his playing than his cool reputation suggests. The mind behind the lines was harmonic: Anthony Braxton once called him "the greatest vertical improviser", and Braxton recorded a 1989 album of Tristano compositions dedicated to him. His sound descends from Lester Young's lyricism and Tristano's discipline, and his collective improvisation with Lee Konitz, in which two horns weave counterpoint with no fixed roles, was a signature of the Tristano school. Overlooked commercially for much of his life and scattered across small labels, he became a cult figure and later a reference point for younger tenor players; Mark Turner has cited him as a counterweight to the pervasive influence of John Coltrane.