Band related question

I have a good late-night party band. Our second studio album is in post production now. We’ve lost a lot of momentum over the last year though, which “appears” to be due to the focus on recording though, but less obvious is a developing situation where certain members are continually unavailable for gigs. These guys tend to say do it without me, as if they aren’t needed. But obviously we don’t have the right sound!

We’ve lost 1000s in income and turned down some gigs with high profile. This will become more of an obvious detriment when the new album is out, since promoters seem to have moved on from interest in us.

What ways do people get round this? Because we’re an originals band where we each write what we play, firing a member would be a big loss and a big deal. What’s it like actually using deps? Do you just have a mate on standby? Is there a minimum expectation for pay? I’m tempted to try to incorporate midi tracks of various missing parts into the set to be dropped in live. But timing this would need a hell of a lot of practice. Is it worth it? And how would you broach this with people? We each write our own parts. Do we own these, too?

The No gig situation is a source of tension, so looking for suggestions to get round this. I was thinking about maybe setting up an “on call” system, so there are certain weeks when we basically have to commit to be available. What other ideas are there?

We’re way beyond a local band stage, but lack of availability is killing our chances to get much further.