Guano Apes were formed in 1994 in Gottingen, Germany, by guitarist Henning Rümenapp, bassist Stefan Ude and drummer Dennis Poschwatta. Female lead singer Sandra Nasić joined the band later that same year.
The band's career took off in 1996 after they had won the "Local Heroes" competition held by VIVA, beating out over 1,000 competitors with their song "Open Your Eyes." The song was their first and most successful single, followed by the release in October 1997 of their debut album "Proud Like a God" on BMG and GUN/Supersonic Records.
Because of escalating personal differences, Guano Apes planned a "farewell" tour in February 2005 and subsequently disbanded. Dennis Poschwatta gave more details on the reason for their breakup in an interview:
"Basically, it was all about money. That is the most common problem that bands break up over. If someone thinks he is a born rock star or whatever, if you just lose your footing - that's what I could call it now. It was also impossible to bring Sandra back down to earth. And if your environment and lawyers encourage stupid opinions or actions, it becomes difficult. It's like a marriage or a relationship - at some point there's a fight, then it just doesn't work any more."
In 2009, Guano Apes reunited and played a string of concerts in Europe, starting in Sofia (Bulgaria) and also including Braga (Portugal), Nickelsdorf (Austria), Przystanek Woodstock (Poland), Rock am Ring and Rock im Park] (Germany) and Bucharest (Romania). In Bucharest the band announced they're working on a new album. In April 2011, the group released their fourth studio album, Bel Air, on Columbia Europe. The album entered the German album charts at number one. They released four singles from this album: "Oh, What a Night", "Sunday Lover", "This Time" and "When the Ships Arrive."
On 28 February 2014, Guano Apes released their first single in two years, titled "Close to the Sun", and released a teaser trailer for their fifth album titled Offline on their YouTube account three days later, confirming the album should be released on 2 May 2014. A music video for "Close To The Sun" was released on YouTube on 2 April. Later that month it was announced that the release of Offline had been pushed back to 30 May.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Proud Like A God, Guano Apes released Proud Like A God XX on 6 October 2017. The album contains newly mixed versions of ten songs that appeared on the original album, plus the previously unreleased track "Score." The Deluxe Edition comes with a bonus CD containing reworked "2017 versions" of six songs from Proud Like A God (with a guest appearance by Danko Jones on the 2017 version of Open Your Eyes), as well as three cover songs, including the first single "Lose Yourself" (originally performed by Eminem). Music videos for "Lose Yourself" and the 2017 version of "Suzie" were released on 6 October and 10 November 2017, respectively.]
Since 2017, Dennis Poschwatta has appeared as a member of the "electro trash" band Fukushima Twins. As of April 2020, they have released a music video for the song "So Do I", and two studio performance videos (for "So Do I" and "Winter").
