Smart textiles are advanced textile materials that sense and respond to stimuli like pressure, temperature and electrical impulses, made from conductive materials like metals, conductive polymers and carbon derivatives. Amongst the various conductive materials available, carbon derivatives like carbon black and graphite pose the advantages of being abundant and not being oxidised with time, over metals and conductive polymers. Smart textiles are being increasingly used in health care to monitor biophysiological signals (ECG, EMG and EEG) as they can be seamlessly integrated in daily wear. In this research, conductive fabric was developed by roller coating with carbon solutions of varying concentrations (5%, 45% and 50%), for the development of textile-based surface electrode. The area of the developed electrode was 3.14 cm2. The coated material was analysed using Raman spectroscopy and XRD to understand the material behaviour. The SEM images showed a uniform coating of the material. The IV characteristics of the prepared textile electrode exhibited an ohmic nature revealing that the material is conductive and their resistance values were found to decrease with an increase in carbon concentration. It was also tested for its thickness, air permeability and thermal resistance to understand the mechanical properties. The obtained EMG signals were of the range − 0.3 to 0.35 mV and that of the ECG signals were − 0.19 to 0.43 mV. 50% concentration of carbon shows higher conductivity with a lower resistance of 2.6 kΩ, which resembled the closest to the EMG (− 0.75 to 0.79 mV) and ECG (− 0.29 to 0.83 mV) signals obtained from a commercial Ag/AgCl gel electrode.