Holly Humberstone cancels her European tour after a medical emergency on the bus

Holly Humberstone has called off the rest of her European tour after a member of her touring party suffered what she described as a serious, life-threatening medical emergency. She announced it on social media on Monday, having kept the details vague for a day while the situation was still unfolding around the crew.

The emergency happened on Sunday morning as the tour bus arrived in Cologne. Humberstone said the team responded and got the person to hospital quickly, that they are now stable and doing well, and that the medical staff in Cologne have been exceptional. She has not named the person involved.

Her reason for stopping was about the shape of the group rather than about logistics. "We are a family, and it wouldn't feel right to continue without them," she wrote, saying she had taken the difficult decision to cancel the remainder of the European run and reschedule it for a point when everyone can come back and play the show that was promised. She apologised to anyone who had travelled and taken time out to be there.

The tour had already been struggling before this. Sunday night's show at Burgerhaus Stollwerck in Cologne was postponed on the day, with a message citing illness within the touring team and the line that her team's wellbeing has to be her first priority. A week earlier she had postponed Le Trabendo in Paris on 15 September and Amsterdam's Paradiso the following night, having lost her voice to what she called some sort of flu.

The cancelled dates are Copenhagen on 22 September, Oslo on 23, Stockholm on 24, Hamburg on 26, Berlin on 27 and Munich on 28. Between the postponements and the cancellations, most of the European leg will now have to be played again at some later point, which will appear on the tour guide when it is rebooked.

The run was supporting Cruel World, the second album Humberstone released in April after announcing it at the start of the year with the single To Love Somebody. Speaking to NME around its release, she said the time off the road had been the first real break she had ever had and that it raised an uncomfortable question: "I know who I am as an artist, but who am I as a person?" A tour that has been interrupted twice by illness is an unkind answer. Other indie and pop acts have had a similar year, among them Brandi Carlile, who postponed her own UK and European dates and Alfie Templeman, who stopped touring to get help.