Our band very much has a leader, he writes all of the music (the drummer now provides the majority of the lyrics) and determines the musical direction.
It works pretty well, all of our opinions are listened to when something comes up, but we all know that the final decision is his. I think we're all ok with it, although there are occassional spats beteeen him and the other singer, nothing major though.
As for the o/p, that's a pants thing for the band to do, but as others have said, forget about them and move on. There will be better things on the horizon.