The genus was first proposed by the entomologists Jésus Gómez-Zurita and Anabela Cardoso as a subgenus of Taophila, after a morphological and molecular study of the latter in 2014. The subgenus was given the name Lapita, and included three species. A 2019 phylogenetic study of the subgenus added a further eight species to it. The subgenus Lapita was discovered to be a junior homonym of the fly genus Lapita Bickel, 2002, so it was renamed to Tricholapita in 2020. Given the many morphological differences to Taophila s. str., the group was also elevated in rank to genus. Additionally, phylogenetic evidence suggested another species, which was proposed in the same work.
