The band with the grotesque name Eiliff was founded in Cologne in the late 1960s. The members were Rainer Brüninghaus (keyb), Detlev Landmann (dr), Herbert J. Kalveram (sax), Englishman Bill Brown (b) and Houschäng Nejadepour (g, sit), a Persian who grew up in Berlin and Düsseldorf. They were all excellent musicians and had previously played in various bands, Brüninghaus, Landmann and Kalveram also in free jazz formations. As experienced musicians well known on the scene, they soon received a recording contract with the major label Philips. They recorded their first self-titled album in 1971 at Star Studios in Hamburg, engineered by Conny Plank and produced by Rainer Goltermann. It was released that same year with a humorous but meaningless cover designed by Witt Design Studio.

However, their complex, progressive Canterbury-influenced jazz rock, with its sometimes long solo improvisations and occasional ethnic accents through sitar and percussion, found only few buyers at the time, so Philips urged them to record a single before they recorded their second album, Girlrls!, in 1972.