Robert G. Leith was born in
Buckinghamshire on 17 April 1964. Leith's father managed the local cinema and Leith was into films. He met future guitarist Mark Farrelly when they were about nine years old through Farrelly's interest in horror and death; the pair would swap horror magazines and plastic monster models which they were into around 1975. They both went to the
Lord Grey Comprehensive secondary school in
Bletchley where Leith started up a band called the Bleeding Lips and brought a tape he had done to Farrelly's house one night, inspiring Farrelly to hook up with future Exit-stance member Sean Finnis in the school band the Urban Guerrillas. By the end of 1978, Leith joined up with Farrelly, Finnis and another person to form a school '
supergroup' named Matt Vinyl and the Emulsions, inspired by the
punk ethos. They played their first gig in the school hall. Farrelly and Finnis went on to be in several other bands together before Farrelly formed
Part 1 with Leith, Chris Baker and Chris Pascoe. They each had their own influences; Leith liked early
Genesis. Part 1 were with the early
death rock scene and mined a similar vein aesthetically to
Rudimentary Peni. The band made their live debut in October 1980 at the Compass Club in Bletchley supporting the local band the Flying Ducks. After their second gig at the Peartree Bridge Centre went badly, they decided to look beyond the confines of
Milton Keynes and recorded their first demo at The Crypt, an
eight-track studio in
Stevenage, in January 1981. Another demo,
In the Shadow of the Cross, was recorded in spring that year and garnered attention from the thriving underground network of
zines and like-minded individuals including Andy Martin of
the Apostles. Part 1 released the
Funeral Parade EP in October 1982 on their own Paraworm Records and played their final show in April 1983, supporting the
Subhumans at
Oxford Street's
100 Club, where Leith split his
bass drum skin. He left soon afterwards to join the London band the Snails. When Part 1 began to play live again in the 2010s over twenty years later, Chris Low replaced Bob Leith behind the drums.
(pictured in 1984) before replacing him after Luckman left Cardiacs.|185x185px Leith was the singer and drummer in the
progressive pop band Ad Nauseam with guitarist
Jon Poole, which had elements of Genesis and '80s rock. The band's manager invited them into a venue to watch Cardiacs soundcheck, where they met Cardiacs drummer
Dominic Luckman and gave him a
cassette tape containing Ad Nauseam songs after realising they shared similar musical interests. The band had little time to get him ready and debt from the collapse of
Rough Trade forced the members to stay busy which lead to band downtime. Leith also played with the reformed
Alternative TV in its 1995 and 1996 lineups. He collaborated on Cardiacs' 1996 album
Sing to God, taking on some of the lyrics to help take the burden from Tim Smith who was growing wary of lyric writing, contributing to the songs "Eat It Up Worms Hero", "Dirty Boy" and "Nurses Whispering Verses". On "Eat It Up Worms Hero", Smith and Leith lyrically create an uneasy narrative; Leith adds percussion on "Wireless" which gives the song drive to avoid ambient stasis. According to writer Eric Benac, Jim Smith and Leith keep "a perfect pace" on "Dirty Boy", for which Leith wrote "about 90 per cent" of the lyrics according to Poole. "Quiet as a Mouse" is a vocal interlude which allegedly features discovered conversations which were accidentally recorded when Tim and Jim Smith's mother visited while recording the album, discussing humorously whether to murder Leith. "Red Fire Coming Out from His Gills" features "heavy drums" from Leith causing dramatic tension, and a
re-recording of "Nurses Whispering Verses" has Leith change the lyrics of the song slightly. The track "
Manhoo" was released as a limited-run single with a smilling Bob Leith on the cover. The opening piano of the B-side "What Paradise Is Like" is pushed by Leith's insistent drum thump, before Leith and Jim fall into a fast-paced rhythm groove. Leith pushes the "
Odd Even" B-side "Hurricanes" forward and the climax features "stop-and-start Leith-bashing". To learn the new
Sing to God tracks, Poole and Leith were given cassette copies of early mixes. The four-piece stayed in place for Cardiacs' 1999 album
Guns, with Leith on drumming duty. On the album, "Spell with a Shell" features a steady drum pound from Leith; the chorus of "There's Good Cud" pushes into pummeling drum rhythms, the drums becoming faster-paced in the second verse, with Benac noting Leith's bass drum skills as particularly important on the track. Leith's rhythm on "Wind and Rain Is Cold" is mixed loud, and Leith gets insistent as the music ups the ante in "Song of a Dead Pest", with tuned percussion providing melody and harmony. Leith and Jim Smith move through the twisting structure of the last track "Will Bleed Amen. Leith contributed vocals to the band Katherine in a Cupboard, which Jim Smith also played in. With a four-piece lineup up of Tim, Jim, Leith and newly welcomed guitarist
Kavus Torabi replacing Poole, the best takes from the three-night stand were released in the two-hour 2005 live album
The Special Garage Concerts as two different volumes. The live version of the song "A Game for Bartie's Party" is partially sung by Leith in a "deranged, most-likely drunk and haunting manner" according to
Mike Vennart, giving way to other sections sung by Tim. Torabi and Leith were given free rein to do what they wanted with the songs, and Martijn Voorvelt of
Perfect Sound Forever noted that learning the songs "must have been particularly hard work" for them as they were not in the original lineup. A surrealist vein runs through the footage: the band is crammed into a tiny shack and constantly get in each other's way with Jim playing in his underwear fighting for space against one of Leith's cymbals not in use. He made his debut with Blurt at the 2004
Glastonbury Festival's
Friday JazzWorld Stage and recorded the tracks "Sweet Thames", "Hat" and "Cut It!" with the band which were released on the single "Cut It!" / "Hat" on 15 September 2008 and the album
Cut It! in 2010. in 2005 In 2005, Cardiacs' shows saw the group add three additional singers and two percussionists: Cathy Harabaras and Dawn Staple, to the lineup, who contributed drums with Leith. The extra percusion is featured on the 2007 single "
Ditzy Scene" as Leith pounds a bass drum rhythm accompanied by a steady
tambourine. Cardiacs, which had a lineup of Tim and Jim Smith, Torabi, Leith,
Melanie Woods and Harabaras, stopped their activities in 2008 when Tim Smith was forced to retire from the scene due to neurological problems that caused him difficulty with speech, movement and muscle spasms which arose following a
cardiac arrest. The release of their proposed next album, tentatively known as
LSD, was delayed due to Smith's cardiac arrest, Leith has at times been the drummer of the band
Spiritwo. Drummer Matt Riley joined the band when they played a gig with no drummer after Leith left using electronic beats, and Leith joined the band alongside Riley at their November 2015 single launch for the
art-rock double A-side "Mesumamim" / "Face to Face". He guests on most tracks of Crayola Lectern's 2013 album
The Fall and Rise of... which also includes Poole and Hayes, and featured in
Mark Cawthra's
psychedelic rock band Redbus Noface at
Salisbury Arts Centre in 2016. The 2018 double album
Real Estate/Fake Inverno by the Italian
pop group
Sterbus was made in cahoots with Leith and features his permanent presence in a guest appearance. He was in the band for "a long while" including when they recorded the track "Hello, Salty Salty" which was released on
Here Come the Lights in 2024. In 2019, Hayes put together
Panixphere, a three piece band with Poole and Leith, which was initially Hayes' first band formed in 1983. The band was recording a studio album as of 2020 and mixed a live album recorded in December 2019. Leith returned to his drumstool with Cardiacs Family & Friends for the 2024 Sing to Tim gigs commemorating and celebrating Tim Smith at The Garage on 3 and 4 May, as well as Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club on 5 May in the Cardiacs Family lineup with Jim Smith as the rhythm section, Following the gigs, four October dates were announced and Cardiacs performed a live session on
Marc Riley and
Gideon Coe’s
BBC Radio 6 Music show, broadcast on 17 June. Leith sang lead vocals on some tracks, which were mixed together with different singers' voices, where Tim Smith half-finished or hadn't started the recording of his own vocals. Former
Oceansize and
Empire State Bastard musician
Mike Vennart (vocals),
Rose-Ellen Kemp (vocals), and the late Tim Smith, joined Leith (vocals and drums), Jim Smith, and Torabi on the album. In 2025, the line-up of the band featured Jim Smith, Leith, Torabi, Fortnam, and Herington, with Vennart,
Sharron Fortnam and Jayne Kay on vocals. On the back of the release of
LSD, Cardiacs announced three live dates for March 2026. == Musical style ==