Damage in infrastructure can be as a result of its degenerating state under service loads or after exposure to impact loads such as earthquakes. Early damage detection is essential to preventing failure and ensure the integrity and safety of structures. Damages lead to changes in the geometric and material properties like mass, stiffness, and damping, and influences the response behavior of the structure. It has been proven that vibration-based damage detection technique is an efficient means of damage identification and assessing structural integrity. This review article examines conventional vibration-based damage detection techniques. It highlights the importance of early damage detection as a means of ensuring infrastructural safety, reliability and maintenance. Damage detection techniques like the time domain methods, frequency domain and modal domain methods have been developed and constantly evolving to meet the existing challenge of identifying structural damages. The practical application is still minimal, hence more research works are necessary for damage detection in large civil engineering structures.