In comments, Eldritch and I were discussing why some bands seem reluctant to call themselves "goth" even though they seem to have that style.
Eldritch gave the example of Dr Arthur Krause who said "Some people call it goth and we are fine with that."
I note that the TRAITRS song I just posted sounds a lot like early Cure, but their bandcamp page labels it as "punk / coldwave / post-punk".
Is that kinda thing common? If so why?
Look Siouxsie straight in the eye and tell her why.
The Cure are considered Post-Punk, sometimes even New Wave. It depends on the era of their music.
Sisters tend to fit into in the genre known as Gothic Rock, which is uniquely different it's sound.
Souxie is more on the Post-Punk side, but understand it's not unusual for bands to cross genres as they aren't trying to be a specific genre, they are the product of their influences and creativity.
There are stylistic distinctions as well as differences in musical origins that separate lots of music which still gets grouped into the generalized term of "goth".
To the people who are passionate about music, knowing and representing those distinctions is often important.
That's pretty interesting, because it suggests a whole historiography of music appreciation. Like, the term "post-punk" was meaningless before punk, right? So imagine there's some new groundbreaking genre a couple years from now, and everything we're listening to is re-contextualized to determine how "proto-NewGroundbreakingGenre" it is. And the people who listen to NewGroundbreakingGenre literally hear music differently than we do.
I am in no way minimizing your comment -- I think it's pretty awesome when some DJ puts on a song and gives it a genre name that I've never heard of before. Clearly they spend a lot of time listening to music and can identify distinctions that I can't.