Distortion sustain on track splits

I’m new to cubase and could use some help.

I comped a lead guitar track, it has a bunch of splits in it and dead space between the splits.

When I put it through distortion (for example using the Cubase “Distortion” insert"), I get a nice singing sound with good sustain. However, when I reach the end of the split, the sustain gets cut immediately. I was expecting to have the natural sustain carry on for a while…

I then found a relatively quiet spot in the track, copied it after the split a few times and I then did get sustain.

Since I have a lot of holes to fill. I then decided that if I had an lane with a “empty” track, that would then comp together and I’d get sustain through those gaps. So I recorded a lane from a muted input channel, comped it and now I have no empty spots. But still no sustain through those splits.

So, I figure I’m doing something wrong or missing a key concept. Hope you can enlighten, so I can get this song done!