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Material for Faith was demo'd by both the group and Robert Smith alone in his parents' dining room in the summer of 1980, and initial recording sessions took place at Morgan Studios in London in September. Smith, who clearly appreciated nuance, claimed the tracks (including 'All Cats Are Grey' and the unreleased 'Going Home Time' were intended to sound 'funereal', but simply came out dull. After a couple of days, and with live commitments approaching, the sessions were abandoned and the recording was put on hold.

When studio sessions for Faith resumed in February 1981, they were equally joyless. Smith was unable to get the right tone in his vocals, which were, in his estimation, sounding 'too happy' and stints at different London studios – Red Bus, Roundhouse, and Trident – proved fruitless. Proceedings ground to a halt and relations between Smith and co-producer Mike Hedges, who had worked on Three Imaginary Boys and Seventeen Seconds, had begun to deteriorate. To make matters worse, the singer had moved onto something stronger than home brew.

'I was taking a lot of coke during the making of that album', Smith told Uncut. 'And it was a very difficult and cranky atmosphere. Everything we did was wrong. I was permanently red-eyed and bitter and Faith didn't turn out how I wanted it to at all.'

Faced with mounting bills, Fiction Records' Chris Parry intervened and smoothed things over. The Cure then completed the main tracks for the album at Morgan Studios in just over a week, although the process was far from plain sailing. 'I remember finishing the vocals off at Abbey Road and just feeling incredibly empty', Smith would reveal later.