Tats Lau Yi-Tat was born on February 27, 1963 in Hong Kong. He’s been involved in the music industry since 1980, writing songs for popular singers like Alan Tam and Sam Hui. In 1985, he formed the musical group Tat Ming Pair with Anthony Wong Yiu-Ming. They enjoyed much success until disbanding in 1990, after which Lau started to focus on composing film scores. His scores for the films Queen of Temple Street (1990) and The Log (1996) were nominated for Hong Kong Film Awards. Teaming up with Tommy Wai Lai-Keung to compose the music for Temptation of a Monk (1993) proved to be a good move. They won for Best Original Film Score at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards.

In the nineties, Lau started to act in movies extensively and developed a disturbing and hilarious oddball screen persona. He appeared in a number of Stephen Chow movies, most notably in Forbidden City Cop (1996), in which he plays a cross-dressing character who floats around like a ghost, and God of Cookery (1996), as Chow's bizarre Shaolin headmaster. His most recent outings include So Close and Nine Girls and a Ghost.

Lau appears to be as quirky in real life as he is in the movies. When asked by Eric Tsang why Tat Ming Pair broke up, his answer was simply, “Because Wong Yiu-Ming had smelly armpits.” He temporarily got over the stink for a Tat Ming reunion in 1996. (Yinique 2003)