[2] After the Fire then went through several personnel changes before settling on Banks, guitarist and vocalist Andy Piercy, bassist Nick Battle, and drummer Ivor Twidell.
[citation needed] They started the new wave synth pop movement at the time most bands in their caliber were mostly punk and pub rock.
After Battle left, Piercy switched to bass, and, after a short period as a three-piece (former member, Bob Price, rejoined as a touring guitarist), John Russell joined on guitar.
The group signed to CBS, and released their second album, Laser Love, in 1979,[2] which marked the band's move towards the new wave, with shorter, more catchy pop rock tracks.
Twidell left the band to seek a career as a frontman and Nick Brotherwood took over briefly, after the album Laser Love was recorded.
Although "Der Kommissar", which had already become a hit in Canada, finally took hold in the American charts, CBS tried to get the band back together without success.
Piercy immediately went back into the studios to rerecord "One Rule" and "Dancing in the Shadows", the latter being released as a single and charting in the US with some success.
Piercy started work on a new album called Free Heat (an anagram of After The Fire, with the missing letters creating the word "rift").
Then towards the end of recording, the producer, John Eden, told Piercy that he "didn't like" any of the styles, bands or writers he was aspiring to.