Robert Smith explains why it took so long to get The Cure back on tour

The Cure are back on tour this year and performing in countries they have never been to before. While the band would perform Songs of a Lost World in its entirety at The Troxy in London back in 2024, the group fell silent throughout 2025. The Robert Smith-fronted group is now back and has performed some staggering shows across Europe. With The Cure set to perform in Wythenshawe Park later this month, some may be left wondering what took the band so long to return to the stage.

Smith once answered that when explaining why he had taken a four-year break from the group in the 1990s. The Boys Don’t Cry and Disintegration hitmaker explained that it was merely a matter of wanting to do other things that made him put the band on hiatus. The Cure has come and gone over the years, with their four-year break in the 1990s between Wish and Wild Mood Swings explained away by Smith.

A similar break came about for 4:13 A Dream and Songs of a Lost World. It was a mere 16-year break from the studio but the band would routinely play shows across the globe. The Cure is now set to perform at Wythenshawe Park after a hugely busy summer schedule. While a break is good for any band, particularly veteran rockers who have been playing shows for 50 years, some fans may be wondering just what Smith and company get up to when not on the road.

Smith said back in the mid-1990s: “Not really, because I think the break…After the last tour, the Wish tour in ’92, I just decided to take a break from it all and come back to it if I felt I wanted to, which is exactly what I did. And everyone was going, ‘Oh four years is too long to be away,’ but everything I’ve ever done with the group has kind of reflected just how I feel. And I just didn’t want to do it for a couple of years. I’m doing it now again because I want to.”

Smith has also confirmed time is running out for The Cure and confirmed his intention to retire a few years from now. The Cure frontman pencilled in 2029 as the date of retirement but says there are a further two albums to release before then.

He said in late 2024: “We were going to play festivals next year, but a couple weeks ago, I decided that we weren’t going to play anything next summer. The next time we go out on stage will be autumn next year.

“But then we’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the next anniversary — the 2028 anniversary that’s just looming on the horizon. The 2018 one, I started to think about in late 2016, thinking, ‘I’ve got a year and a half, it’s easy!’ And I still didn’t manage to get there in time. Now, I’m starting to think, ‘2028, I must get things in order;’ so [that’s] the documentary film and various other things like that.

“I’m 70 in 2029, and that’s the 50th anniversary of the first Cure album [Three Imaginary Boys]. If I make it that far, that’s it. In the intervening time, I’d like to include playing concerts as part of the overall plan of what we’re going to do. I’ve loved it; the last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30-odd years! It’s been great.”