Cathal Coughlan, the Irish singer-songwriter who fronted Microdisney and the Fatima Mansions, has died at age 61. As The Guardian reports, his family said that he “slipped away peacefully in hospital after a long illness.”

Coughlan, who was born in Cork, formed Microdisney with Sean O’Hagan in 1980. By the time they released their proper full-length debut Everybody Is Fantastic in 1984, they had relocated to London. The band called it quits a few years later after 1988’s 39 Minutes. (In 2018, Microdisney reunited for the band’s first shows in 30 years.) O’Hagan went on to form the High Llamas while Coughlan started the Fatima Mansions. The first Fatima Mansions record, Against Nature, came out the following year, and the band was active until 1995.

Coughlan continued to make music, both on his own and with others. He worked with comedian Sean Hughes for the project Bubonique and collaborated with Luke Haines and Andrew Mueller on The North Sea Scrolls. Last year, he teamed up with producer Jacknife Lee for a new collab called Telefís. Coughlan’s most recent solo album, Song Of Co-Aklan, was released last year.