Good guys wear black

The last time Robert Smith stopped in Hong Kong, he wasn't sure where he was. Tired and emotional after missing a connecting flight from Japan to Australia (or the other way round - he really can't remember), he recalls being in a hotel room with his band, the Cure, feeling far less than 100 per cent. Something to do with drinking. It was 1984. The outside world was a muddle of bright lights and loud noises. 'I don't even think I knew I was in Hong Kong,' he says.

It's 4.30am in London, but Smith sounds chipper on the phone. It's the end of his work day, or night (he starts at 2pm) and he's been trying to wrap up the band's 13th studio album before they head off on a tour taking in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australasia and North America. When Smith arrives here for the Cure's July 30 show, he'll be treating it as his first official trip. 'My intention this time is to visit Hong Kong and walk away from it with some memories of what it's like,' he says with a wry laugh.

The Cure have been pegged as a gothic rock band, but their vast catalogue of songs, from the gloomy Charlotte Sometimes to the syrupy Friday, I'm in Love and the hopelessly romantic Lovesong, renders any categorisation futile. Since the band formed as a teenage outfit in the 1970s, its changing lineup of members has threatened, but never extinguished, its existence. Smith has been the only constant.

Guitarist Porl Thompson is Smith's brother-in-law and was a member of the original lineup in 1976, but was dropped in 1979, only to be re-enlisted in 1983. He stayed until 1993, when he left to tour with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. He eventually helped reform the Cure in 2005.

Jason Cooper has been first-choice drummer since 1995.

Bassist Simon Gallup joined the band in 1979, before leaving three years later due to differences with Smith. As he explained shortly after: 'It's just basically that Robert and I are both really arrogant bastards, and it got to an extreme. I suppose you just can't have two egocentrics in a band, and Robert was sort of 'the main man'.'