Lyrita was founded in 1959 to record little-known and seldom-recorded British music and initially focused on piano and chamber repertoire. During the 1970s, the label's repertoire broadened to include orchestral music; premiere recordings were made of music by composers including Finzi, Holst, George Lloyd and Cyril Scott; one additional benchmark was a release of Michael Tippett's opera The Midsummer Marriage.

Some of these recordings were remastered and distributed on CD in the 1990s, writes Gramophone, but Lyrita's distribution deal with Nimbus fell through at the end of the decade during the course of Nimbus's near-death experience; since then, the discs were available only through Harold Moores Records in London's West End.

According to Gramophone, the first discs to appear will be CD transfers that appeared in the 1990s (and which were then distributed via Nimbus); the remaining original analogue masters will be digitized and transferred to CD. The re-launched catalogue will include digital recordings never before issued in any format. In addition, according to BBC Music, the recordings will be available for download via the web site www.lyrita.co.uk.