|PIC1|Switchfoot has announced yesterday that their highly anticipated European tour in August has been cancelled, due to a family medical situation. Although the band has been playing live music for years, they have never cancelled a show, according to their website.

They stated on their website: “We feel as disappointed as many of you might feel, please accept our apologies. We will absolutely be back as soon as we possibly can.”

The popular rock band was initially scheduled to rock the stage at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, 8 August 2006, with Tree63.

In addition, the rest of the dates for their European tour this summer will be cancelled, including gigs in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Denmark.

Switchfoot’s latest album Nothing is Sound follows the group's multi-platinum 2003 breakthrough, The Beautiful Letdown, which spawned the hits "Dare You to Move" and "Meant to Live."

From 2003 to 2005, Switchfoot performed around 400 shows from recorded Nothing is Sound while on tour, and used their live performances to work on the new material before committing it to disc.

|AD|"That was one advantage we had on this record," frontman Jon Foreman said in a press release. "We'd been playing some of the songs, like 'Daisy' and 'Politicians,' off and on for a while. We got to road test them, check the tires, and switch things up before we ever pressed the 'record' button. The audiences determined which songs were selected and how they turned out.

"The trickiest part is trying to capture what we do live and bottle it up into the 1's and 0's on a CD," he continued. "It helped to play these songs live, feel that energy, and say, 'OK, this is what we have to match.'"

The month after its release, Nothing is Sound was gold certified, signifying US shipment of 500,000 copies.

Claiming to be “Christian by faith, not by genre,” Switchfoot won five Gospel Music Awards last year, including 'Artist of the Year', and was nominated for another 'Artist of the Year' at the 37th Gospel Music Awards this year.