Coming out of Israel's early extreme metal scene, the band "Resurrection" was formed in 1991, who were influenced by both the Florida and Swedish death metal scenes. In 1992, after a period self-realization and determination, the band decided to focus on the actual and cultural reality of the middle-east region and thus began incorporating middle eastern rhythms into their music. They therefore changed their name to "Orphaned Land," which they felt better suited the more melodic direction in which their music headed, a style for which they coined the term "oriental metal," claiming to be on their demo album The Beloved's Cry "the first oriental death metal" [sic]. The name "Orphaned Land" actually comes from a Yehuda Poliker song, and the name is used as a rejection of the term "Holy Land," due to the continuous conflict within the region.

Orphaned Land has explored a range of musical styles and ideological concepts from around the world throughout their discography, such as Spanish Flamenco and Chinese Taoism. They are most notable for utilizing traditional instruments from across the Middle East and Mediterranean, as well as those from Mizrahi, and Jewish heritage in their predominately metal-based music. For instance, they frequently incorporate the saz, qanun, oud, and bouzouki. They have utilized over 20 different types of percussion and have used at least 10 languages throughout their over 30 year long history. Most of their lyrical themes revolve around the three Monotheistic religions, which are often used as an analogy to express their desire for peace in the Middle East. Another common recurring theme the band has used is the ideological battle and balance between light and darkness. A progressive and innovative band, Orphaned Land is known as a pioneering act in Folk Metal (eg, Oriental Metal), Melodic Death Doom, Melodic Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, and Extreme Progressive Metal, and thus their influence in the realm of metal is wide and diverse.

In 1992, after self-releasing their debut demo The Beloved's Cry, the band was signed by the French label "Holy Records" for 2 albums. Their first album, Sahara, was released in 1994, and was followed by El Norra Alila in 1996. The latter of which places larger emphasis on the ethnic elements of the band's music, incorporating several Jewish prayers and liturgical poems, as well as its incorporation of Jewish modality, Hazzanic vocal structures, and Hebrew cantillation, while using more of the Arabic rhythms and instrumentation featured their previous release. "El Norra Alila" itself is a fusion of Hebrew and Arabic that can be translated into "God of Light, Evil of the Night" and also acts as a play on the Mizrahi/Sephardic piyyut El Norra Alila, recited during Yom Kippur, which asks God for forgiveness. It is a concept album about the balance between good and evil, and acts as a precedent for several of the band's later releases that deal with similar themes. These two albums set the stage for Orphaned Land's unique sound, a blueprint for oriental metal - that is a fusion between Middle Eastern traditional music and western metal music. It was the first time a band from this region of the world would be able to successfully breach into the western world and proved that metal musicians from anywhere in the world were able to produce music, commercially. The albums were widely covered in the press and drew hundreds of interviews.

Following the success of their first 2 albums, Orphaned Land got several offers from major labels, and finally signed with Century Media in 1997. They began writing a new "very long" album. Unfortunately, due to personal issues, they went on hiatus for nearly 4 years, not performing in any live setting. Meanwhile, the band worked in "low gear," producing their album in a very structured and highly arranged fashion. In 2001, Kobi Farhi, the band's lead singer, received an email from a Jordanian fan in which the fan showed Kobi his tattoo of the Orphaned Land logo on his arm. Heartwarmed and inspired from this, the band got back together, and pushed to finish their album. Because of this story, Orphaned Land fans are notorious for getting tatoos of the band's logos, and since 2013, of the their album cover All is One, as well. The band encourages their fans to send them images of their tattoo(s) of the band, where, nowadays, they then share the photo on social media platforms.

The preceding four years of silence was retroactively known as "The calm before the flood". They returned from hiatus by playing three shows entitled The Calm Before The Flood. Two of them were played in Israel, and one was played in Turkey. At the show in Turkey, Arab fans from all over the world showed up - this was unprecedented for an Israeli group, as Arabs and Israelim often view each other as enemies. Among the attendees was the Jordanian fan who had sent them the video of his tattoo. He brought with him an Egyptian book, written in Arabic, warning the reader about Satanic groups. Within the book were lyrics from one of Orphaned Land's songs. He then revealed that an Orphaned Land fan from Egypt was imprisoned for six months simply because the police found an Orphaned Land CD in his house... In the Arab world, at this point in time, metal was considered highly underground, and even Satanic. Thus there had never been a metal concert in Egypt or Jordan, a large reason that the Orphaned Land concert in Turkey attracted so many Arab fans. In Israel, one of the shows, which was acoustic, was recorded and released initially as the bonus CD on the deluxe edition of their then upcoming album. 20 years later it was digitally released, on its own. From there onward, there was no turning back; the band once again went into "high gear," and in 2004 they finished their long-awaited album Mabool - The Story Of The Three Sons Of Seven, telling a story of the band's interpretation of the epic biblical story "Noah's Arc." However, this story was itself used as an analogy for the band to express their frustration with the state of the Middle East as God summoned the flood to punish mankind for not getting along with each other after the "three sons of the seventh" had failed to convince them to do so.

In subsequent years, Orphaned Land's lyrical themes would revolve around peace, unity between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and cooperation in the Middle East.

Mabool set Orphaned Land in the front of the middle-eastern & worldwide metal scene as the flagship band of Israel. The band toured in almost 30 countries, across 4 continents. They were first ever Israeli band to perform in world-famous festivals such as Wacken Open Air, Summer-Breeze, Hellfest, and ProgPower. After their extensive touring schedule, in 2006, the band began creating their next album, on which they ultimately spent four years working. In 2008, the band was featured in a heavy metal documentary, Global Metal, being shown as an act that promotes peace and unity, featured immediately after a band from Indonesia had preached antisemitism and hatred towards Israel.

In 2010, they released their fourth album The Neverending Way Of ORwarriOR, produced by Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, Opeth). The cover art for this album uses a font that spells out the name simultaneously in English, Hebrew and Arabic. "ORwarriOR" translates into "Light Warrior" in both Hebrew and Arabic. It is a concept album about the battle between light and darkness, similar to El Norra Alila. The darkness, here, represents a place of questions, while the light represents a place of answers. The metaphorical "warrior of light" is no messiah, but rather your, the listeners', inner-self. The band relates this concept to lighting a match in a dark room - without the match you cannot see anything, but once the match is lit, you can see everything in the room. Therefore, the listener must use their inner light to enlighten their soul and find the answers they seek. This album was made a free download for any fans who live in an Arab country. At Hellfest 2011, during their world tour in support of this album, Orphaned Land was caught in a controversy when they hired Joanna Fakhry, a Lebanese belly-dancer, to perform with them at the event, at the request of Fakhry herself. While Orphaned Land is known to frequently perform with belly-dancers, at this event, however, Fakhry held up a Lebanese flag while Farhi held up an Israeli flag, simultaneously. Israel and Lebanon are technically at war against each other, so while the fans of the band and festival attendees supported this gesture, Fakhry received death threats from the Hezbollah, an Islamic militant organization in Lebanon, and she reports that she is unable to return to Lebanon because of this event. She has resided in France ever since.

In 2013, Orphaned Land released All is One. While this album is more accessible and simple than the band's previous albums, they claim that it is lyrically their darkest album. On this album, the band went a less progressive and more commercial path then they had ever gone before - the album is devoid of nearly all extreme metal elements, instead opting for a more symphonic-oriented sound.

In 2017, Farhi received a phone call from Steve Hackett of the progressive rock band Genesis, during which the two agree to appear as guests on each other's upcoming albums. Farhi performed vocals on Hackett's album, The Night Siren, while Hackett performed a guitar solo on Orphaned Land's upcoming album. In 2018, Orphaned Land released their sixth and most recent studio album, Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs, and is the band's "protest album," with anti-government rhetoric. It is a concept album that references the ancient Greek story The Cave by Plato, which tells the story of a man who is afraid to leave a dark cave and face the light of the outside world. The story is used as an analogy to describe how knowledge is the source of good and ignorance is the source of evil. The band won the "Video of the Year" award at the Progressive Music Awards 2018 for their music video Like Orpheus. The video is based on a true story about an Israeli Arab girl who went to a Behemoth concert in her hijab, but her parents have since banned her from associating with the metal world.

In 2019, there was an online petition for Orphaned Land to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for their commitment to allowing the Arab World to listen to their music despite bans on such a thing from Arab League countries.

The band released a boxset in 2021 containing all six of their studio albums and two bonus discs, commemorating their 30th anniversary. They are reportedly planning on releasing a 7th album soon, but there is no publicly available information about it at this present time...