Tolerable Music began as a quite literal name for the record label on artist Eli Gumble's debut release in 2019. As a birthday present, a friend opened a company for Eli under the name "Tolerable Music Ltd". The company began as the name for Eli's robot combat team, with the name tweaked to "Tolerable Music & Robotics" to make some more sense.

In 2022, Tolerable Music began hosting the event that would become Rock & Robots at The Others in Stoke Newington after Eli hosted a birthday party there and was offered one night a month to put something on, which ended up being a robot fighting tournament followed by live music.

Robot combat can definitely become as big as it was in the late 90s again