I have set up a test project using a resized UIToolBar over other content and the UIBarStyleBlack setting works as usual. So maybe there is something else in the whole view hierarchy that is messing this up. I hope this is a clue to you to look for.
It's the default blurTintColor property that causes the problem. My workaround is to set it to nil but I guess I would be good to not take it into account when liveBlur is set to YES and style is set too.
I have set up a test project using a resized UIToolBar over other content and the UIBarStyleBlack setting works as usual. So maybe there is something else in the whole view hierarchy that is messing this up. I hope this is a clue to you to look for.