Recorded and mixed over seven days, along with the rest of the songs from the album, "A Forest" is representative of The Cure's 1980s gothic rock phase.

Mike Hedges co-produced the album Seventeen Seconds as well as "A Forest" with The Cure's Robert Smith.

[1] At the time of the recording of the album, bass guitarist Simon Gallup and keyboardist Matthieu Hartley had been added to the band's lineup.

[1] Gallup and Hartley joined remaining Cure members Smith (vocals, guitar) and Lol Tolhurst (drums) in late 1979 during the group's Future Pastimes tour, on which "A Forest" was one of the new songs added to their set list.

[1] "A Forest" and its parent album Seventeen Seconds are representative of The Cure's gothic rock phase in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Following the echoing repetition of the word "again", a guitar solo appears which avoids string bends and moving in a pentatonic manner.

"[1] Rikky Rooksby said that the slow phase effect heard on the guitar in "A Forest" "almost became a Smith trademark for a while".

[8] Simon Gallup said his playing on the track was intended to be reminiscent of the bass work in the music of The Stranglers, whose bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel was a major influence on him.

He has said the lyric was based upon a dream he had as a child where he was lost in the woods unable to escape, but later denied it and stated, "It's just about a forest.

[7] A live version of "A Forest" appeared on a four-song edition of The Hanging Garden released in July 1982.

Robert Smith sang on a Blank & Jones cover version of the song, which appeared on their 2004 album Monument.

It was created by David Hiller, who mixed footage from the band's 24 April 1980 debut appearance on BBC TV's Top of the Pops programme with a forest montage.

Smith said the group "came across looking very morose and disinterested" in the video because that is how they felt at the time;[29] he "hated" Top of the Pops as he was "really anti-pop" during this period.