The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The Cure first began releasing music in the late 1970s with their debut album Three Imaginary Boys (1979); this, along with several early singles, placed the band as part of the post-punk and New Wave movements that had sprung up in the wake of the punk rock revolution in the United Kingdom. During the early 1980s, the band's increasingly dark and tormented music (as well as Smith's stage look) was a staple of the emerging style of music known as gothic rock.