Following the tour for Seventeen Seconds, the Cure returned to Morgan Studios on 27 September 1980 to record a new album, minus Matthieu Hartley, who had departed due to disagreement with the musical direction of the band.

The instrumental piece "Carnage Visors" (i.e., an antonym for "rose-coloured spectacles"; originally available only on the long-play cassette release) is the soundtrack to Carnage Visors, a short film by Ric Gallup, Simon Gallup's brother, that was screened at the beginning of shows in place of a support band on the 1981 Picture Tour, and featured animation of several dolls in different positions and stances.

[6] The album's cover, designed by former and future member Porl Thompson, is a veiled picture of the church Bolton Priory, in the fog.

Sounds reviewer John Gill wrote that while the more uptempo songs "Primary" and "Doubt" were reminiscent of the Cure's previous work, with a "sense of strong, haunting melody", the remainder of the album marked a stark departure for the band; he noted a "Neu!-ish sense of smudged melody, soft tones flowing around a languorous, groaning bass", and found that the band's new sound evoked 1960s acts such as Pink Floyd and the Doors.

Writer Adam Sweeting described Faith as "a sophisticated exercise in atmosphere and production", adding, "It's gloomy but frequently majestic, never using brute force where auto-suggestion will do.

"[20] Record Mirror's Mike Nicholls found that "The Cure remain stuck in the hackneyed doom-mongering that should have died with Joy Division" and panned Faith as "hollow, shallow, pretentious, meaningless, self-important and bereft of any real heart or soul".

[21] In a retrospective review, Chris True of AllMusic called Faith "a depressing record, certainly, but also one of the most underrated and beautiful albums the Cure put together.