Monotonic and cyclic torsion was used to investigate the effects of strain path on the development of as the as-deformed and recrystallised microstructure of two aluminium alloys (AA3103 and AA1050). Upon reversal of the torsional direction, the flow stress rapidly reached the same steady state level and grain structure, as those prior to strain reversal. However, monotonic and cyclic deformation to same net strain led to differences in texture and misorientation distribution. The recrystallised grain size after cyclic deformation was larger than that due to monotonic deformation to the same net strain. This effect is due to a combination of a reduced driving pressure due to a lower fraction of high angle subgrain boundaries and a reduction of the density of favourable nucleation sites. The latter was due to a reduced grain boundary area and a weakening of the deformation zones surrounding the hard intermetallic particles in the test materials.