Cobra formed in the fall of 2008. Prior to this time Terence Cheng was performing live electro shows in Toronto under the name Mr. Furious. His stage set-up involved a MacBook for backing beats and sequences as well as a keytar for live playing. He also sang. Shaun Hatton wasn't really doing anything at the time musically but had recently released a very bad chiptune-ish album under the name DJ Finish Him. When Cheng was tired of playing live shows with a laptop as his band, he decided to enlist the help of Hatton, who had played drums at one point in the past. After a few practices they realized that while the keytar and drums combo looked cool, it sounded like it needed something more. Cheng picked up a guitar and began to play his electro music. Now heard through the filter of a Big Muff pedal and passed through hot tubes in an old guitar cabinet, the songs took on a new feel when played against the accompanying imprecise and unnecessarily loud drumming.

The duo played its first show in November 2008 at The Boat in Toronto. That night Edie Kim, a friend of Cheng's, approached the band and flat-out asked to be Cobra's bassist. She backed up that authority at the first practice as a trio, where her ability to improvise and write her own material cemented her as the third member of Cobra. The band soon began playing regularly in Toronto each month, often to very attentive audiences and some surprise critical reception despite (or possibly somewhat because of) the fact that at every Cobra show, something breaks.

On July 1, 2009, Cobra recorded the entirety of their debut EP, Cobra Destroys, which is admittedly too long to be an EP but too short to be an album. The drums were recorded in one take Cheng's dirt floor garage, where years of fallen autumn leaves blanketed the ground, making for rather uneven footing at times. Guitar, bass, and vocals were all recorded later in the day in Cheng's living room, where the band also incidentally ate a lot of junk food. Copies of this album were included with the purchase of Cobra T-shirts at gigs and also distributed for free in floppy disk format -- technically it was just a disk with a sticker on it that contained a download code.

The band's first single, "1234" was released April 3, 2011 on Bandcamp, a few days after the premier of the video for "1234," which was shot, edited, and directed by Jaan Silmberg. The band is currently recording a full-length album with notable Toronto chiptune musician and producer Jefftheworld.