Smith was influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshees' "wall of noise" and the Buzzcocks' melodies, and aspired to combine the two. He said, "The two groups that I aspired to be like were and the Banshees and the Buzzcocks. I really liked the Buzzcocks' melodies, while the great thing about the Banshees was that they had this great wall of noise, which I'd never heard before. My ambition was to marry the two." Ian Birch of "Melody Maker" recognised the Banshees' influence on Smith's band early on, comparing The Cure's 1978 debut single "Killing An Arab" favourably to Siouxsie's "Hong Kong Garden" (released a few months earlier). Speaking of his stint of playing guitar with Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1979, Smith said, "It allowed me to experiment. I inherited an approach from , the Banshee's first guitarist] which was just to have everything full up. [...] It was phased/flanged distortion noise." From that time, Siouxsie and the Banshees "were a massive influence" on him. He said, "They were the group who led me towards doing "Pornography". They drew something out of me."