[12] In 1988, the band made their first recording, simply called the '88 Demo alongside Jack Kelley on vocals and Mark van Earp on bass.

[13][14] Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert had played on Death's 1991 album Human and were obligated to take part in the supporting tour of Europe.

[citation needed] During this tour, Death ran into serious financial trouble, which resulted in Masvidal and Reinert's gear being confiscated for six months by a UK promoter.

The band's music featured slower tempos and very few distorted guitars compared to Cynic, but still had a complex, layered sound.

[20][21] Masvidal and Reinert released an album with a more recent project, the indie act Æon Spoke, on SPV Records[22] and Kringel also played with them, touring the UK in 2005.

The members of Cynic loosely reunited (playing with Bill Bruford, Steve Hackett, and Jim Matheos on various tracks) on Gordian Knot's second album, Emergent.

Gobel, the longtime guitarist who played on Focus, could not participate due to family and work commitments, and David "Mavis" Senescu was brought aboard as a replacement.

Masvidal revealed in an interview the plans for the coming EP:[26] 'Re-Traced' is an experiment for us – an opportunity to turn four songs from 'Traced in Air' inside out and to share something new ...

These interpretations feel channeled from another galaxy ... For the most part, the tunes reference some of our favourite musical forms and in our own curious way (electronic/ambient, jazz/fusion, drum n' bass, experimental, shoegaze).

There is no vocoder, no traditionally busy Cynic riffs that are some of our most signature sounds, but the music retains its song structure, integral melodic sense, harmony and lyrical inspiration.Later blogs on MySpace revealed that the new EP would be titled Re-Traced.

[27] Titled "Re-Traced / Re-Focused Live", the tour found Cynic performing their debut album Focus in its entirety, among other tracks.

The final show of the tour took place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; it was the first time in 16 years the band returned to their hometown to perform.

[28] In December 2010, the band announced that bassist Robin Zielhorst and guitarist Tymon Kruidenier were no longer in Cynic due to logistical and various other reasons.

Paul Masvidal describes this new EP as: ...both a philosophical as well as a musical journey, one that begins in the Amazon jungle on the lips of a shamanic wisewoman (as portrayed by Amy Correia) and ends in outerspace.

[31]On October 10, 2011, Cynic uploaded one song from the new EP titled "Carbon-Based Anatomy" and announced that Brandon Giffin and Max Phelps would be playing live with the band.

[32] Commenting on a musical shift from metal elements in an interview on Prog-Sphere.com,[19] Masvidal says: I think every record kind of develops its own thing based on a process and I don't really know what it's gonna sound like until we're really doing it.

(laughs)In March 2012, Cynic released via Season of Mist an album of demos that were produced as a follow-up to Focus back in 1995, entitled The Portal Tapes.

On December 12, 2012, Cynic announced through their official website that Masvidal, Reinert and Sean Malone were entering the studio in "trio mode" to record their fifth release.

[34] In May 2014, Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert publicly revealed their homosexuality,[35] a move that was broadly supported by the heavy metal community.

[10] Hank Shteamer of Rolling Stone magazine wrote a tribute[40] to Reinert shortly after his passing commemorating his contributions to Death and Cynic.

The offshoot Portal later released a demo recording that continues even further in the direction of progressive space rock, refining and softening up their sound.

The result had Cynic put less emphasis on its extreme metal elements, with new guttural vocalist Tymon Kruidenier playing a smaller role than Tony Teegarden did on Focus.

[citation needed] Noting the band's musical progression, The New York Times proclaimed in a positive review of Traced in Air that: "Cynic should be understood not so much alongside any metal bands but along with the radical harmonic progressives in the last 45 years of pop and jazz: composers like Milton Nascimento, The Beach Boys or Pat Metheny.

In fact, more was owed to crossover heroes Ludichrist and thrash metal mavericks Voivod than to any band from the Sunshine State.

Post-Andrew, Masvidal and company developed wider and deeper tastes, seamlessly stitching in new influences like jazz fusion, progressive rock and shoegaze to create new, imaginative shapes..."[52] Dom Lawson of Metal Hammer wrote, "Cynic never lost the legendary status facilitated by their first musical efforts.