Fish's final solo album Weltschmerz arrived in September 2020 after several years of delays. The album was conceived as a work of "beautiful melancholy" to bookend his career, with Fish drawing comparisons to writing his last album with Marillion 31 years previously. The weight of creating a farewell record held significant emotional importance, both for the artist and for listeners who had followed his four-decade career spanning those Marillion years and his subsequent solo work.

The album's creation proved challenging due to personal difficulties: Fish struggled with writer's block following his father's death in 2016 and ongoing health issues that left him in "perpetual recovery" until around February 2019. Once creative momentum returned through collaboration with bassist Steve Vantsis, songwriting accelerated rapidly, yielding four songs in demo form within six weeks—two running approximately 15 minutes each. Fish initially considered a double album but ultimately delayed the release to accommodate designer Mark Wilkinson's timeline, prioritising the quality of the album's packaging and maintaining their longstanding creative partnership that had spanned since 1982.