Oh, good topic. I wish I had clicked on this topic earlier.
I know when I was much younger, when a band lost a key member, I would think the rest just need to give up, and call it a day. I mean, what's the point?
Then as I got older, I realized that it's not fair to the rest of the members to have give up their dream, and their means of living just because 1 key person leaves. I mean, if you've always been a touring musician in a band, you can't just go get another job all that easily. And it's not fair to lose whatever you have with the band just because someone else can't deal.
But, now, I admit it's getting ridiculous what some "bands" are doing.
When Perry left Journey, I got why Neil, Jon, and Ross wanted to continue. And I initially supported them, bought the albums, and saw them on tour.
But then they switched singers too more times, and I couldn't hang (Arneil may be technically correct single, but I don't think he's that good of a singer, and I can't believe they get away with charging a premium ticket price for shows). And now with the more recent line up changes, forget it, it's not a band anymore. It's just Neil's ego and friends.
What really bugs me is the lack of transparency.
A case in point, maybe 2-3 years ago, Nick/Livingdeaddrummmer had a gig opening for Dokken. Now, I'm not a Dokken fan per see, but I enjoyed a few songs from the 80's, and they had recently (at the time) announced a reunion of the original 4 members. So I went to hang with Nick and check it out. Well, it turns out the reunion was a limited few shows in Japan, and this was 1/2 the band with 1/2 fill-ins. Thankfully I didn't pay to get in, because I would have felt ripped off there was NO announcement anywhere this wasn't the reunion line up. Either way the band was awful.
Queensryche, OK, I was on board with 4/5 members. Ok, I was torn when they went down to 3/5 members, but I eventually got on board with that line up's 2nd album, I enjoyed it, and I wanted to see them on tour. But when they were coming through town the next time, they were down to 2/5 of the original band, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy a ticket.
QR jumped the shark when they continued without Kevin Dubrow. And now it's just stupid with zero members.
I love many Jefferson Starship songs but I'm not going to see them with zero original members.
On the other hand, sometimes it's just reality. I love Katatonia, and they are just 2 of 5 guys now because they're not a huge band, they have had multiple people leave because the band just doesn't make enough money. But at least the 2 original members are the principal songwriters, so it makes sense. Lacuna Coil is down to 1/2 of their original line up, and they don't even have a permanent drummer right now, but they have all the same songwriters, and their last albums was actually an improvement.