A couple of remarks after reading this thread:
I'm sure DS was the peak of many band member's careers as musicians. But, although nobody has said it out loud yet, that also applies to Mark. Which might indicate something about the team effort in the DS project, that the contributions made by the others were actually quite important. If not, then why aren't the 96ers as successful? We can always laugh at the works of the old band members who are in tribute bands now, but it's not hard to look at the charts and realize that one should thread carefully - despite MK having a momentum from his name only the others can't match, not much of his solo stuff is appreciated outside of our little bubble. STP is the one exception, and MAYBE GH (but that could just as well be "leftover momentum" from BIA, just like OES sold way more than it deserved because people expected it to be as good as BIA).
And sure, it's fun to speculate about "the valley of Alan Clarks carreer". And then you listen to MFN from the 2019 tour, and realize that there are more people that might be down in the valley somewhere. Or even the albums. They're just not even close to as good as they were around 1996-2005.
Personally, I prefer to lift people up rather than tearing them down - but make no mistake. Just because we're on a MK fan forum, that doesn't mean you can't treat him like one of the tribute band guys and slap him around a bit. I like equal treatment 
(and given the state of Mark nowadays, even if he had toured, you'd probably get a better DS sound elsewhere, anyway. It's like he's 15 years older than all the other guys.)
Being in a famous band is a peak for almost anyone, whether it's some Russian band, The Beatles, The Police, or anyone else. The power of the brand is always bigger than the power of the individual. What you do after this peak is another question... Mark and Sting were principal songwriters, so they can just continue doing what they were doing already with different musicians, which is more or less what happened.
Other musicians are almost guaranteed to fall into this tribute thing at some point or another. How you deal with it is the main challenge. I like how Steward Copeland instead of creating just another tribute band put out a show with an orchestra and 3 great singers "replacing" Sting and playing The Police songs. That's creative and original.
What was the problem for me and for a lot of people I know, was that DSL is just too simple of a concept. No imagination is needed. Take a great band with one of the most unique, irreplicable, and charismatic leaders who lead the band from a humble 4-piece outfit to an orchestra through his 60 songs, replace him, then find a couple of musicians who apparently made a solid impact on the band, and tour with it.
But all of a sudden, it turns out that it's not that easy to reproduce DS, and the project was almost bound to fail from the get-go. I'd rather leave tributes for non-band musicians and have Alan Clark touring with solo piano recitals playing DS music, than having this Frankenstein's monster of tribute bands, "original" "band members", former music legends and questionable marketing.
It might be that the tribute bands would be better off doing the "MK and the 96ers approach", which is to play some DS songs together with their own solo material. I mean, who knows, right?
MK is "looking forward only", but still insisted on playing DS songs despite all the solo tracks he could choose from. It's tempting to say his solo carreer is a "DS tribute band light"
. The big difference is that they never claimed to be a tribute band. That said, he has been branded as "the voice and guitar of Dire Straits", which sounds an awful lot like the same tricks the tribute bands try to pull.
