Andrew was born in Damascus and became a monk at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem at fourteen. After serving as Patriarch Theodore's secretary at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (681) at Constantinople — the council that condemned Monothelitism — he stayed at the capital and was made archbishop of Gortyna in Crete around 692.
He governed Crete for nearly fifty years, becoming famous across the Byzantine world for his hymnography. He is the inventor of the kanon — the principal Byzantine liturgical hymn-form, in nine odes corresponding to the nine biblical canticles, displacing the older kontakion of Romanos the Melodist. The Great Canon of St. Andrew (Mega Kanon) — a 250-stanza penitential masterpiece sung in four sections through the first week of Great Lent and in its entirety on Thursday of the Fifth Week — is one of the most beloved and most-performed texts of the Byzantine liturgical year.
He died on Lesbos in 740 returning from a synod at Constantinople. The Byzantine, Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and Anglican calendars all observe his feast on July 4.