Yeah, sub-genres can be based on the sound of the bass kick, bpm, synth choice, etc. Ask a few different djs where X genre comes from, and they’ll have different thoughts/opinions.
For instance, we’ll take hardstyle. Some believe hardstyle traces its roots to dark trance, others say it’s a merger of hard house w/ hardcore, and others say it came from jump style. Truth be told, there are 3 primary aspects of the genre:
1) saw lead
2) very particular kick distortion that has more of a bounce (where hardcore is more crunchy).
3)145-160 bpm
Some call hardstyle without a reverse-bass kick nustyle (most of the hardstyle you’ll hear today would fall in this category). Then you have jumpstyle, which was around before hardstyle, but evolved simultaneously. Many hardcore producers produce hardcore and hardstyle, and many jumpstyle producers create jump style and hardstyle. Some came from trance, and others came from happy hardcore.
Then you have gabber and nu gabber. The kicks sound slightly different, and synth choice is slightly different as well. Within gabber you have terrorcore, speed core, etc, which most just label under the genre hardcore. Then there’s uk hardcore, which came from happy hardcore, and all sorts of other stuff.
That’s not even an extensive cover of hardcore and hard style; there are so many producers with so many different sounds, and it seems electronic music evolves as fast as technology these days.
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