I use platinum also for live gigs. My issue is with play list. I depend on the now time cursor, however it does not move automatically at start of songs. I have to click mouse on console view page, a little difficult  when you are playing. Scroll lock and pause break only work when not using play list. Also every time a song opens in play list I hear snap, crackle and pops. How can I fix this?

I used to use it but found it too unworkable.  The biggest problems I've had is with switching songs where it keeps shuffling songs in and out of memory.  I think that might be related to your problem about the cursor at the beginning of songs.  It seems to go into convulsions at times for me because it's trying to load up the next song or something.  And while it's flipping out, I'm trying to play.  And since I use automation a lot, it thinks the song has changed when I play it.  Then it doesn't get removed from memory afterwards and further annoys me by asking if I want to save it when closing it.  No, I just want Sonar to remove it from memory and move on to the next song.
 
I now use an Autohotkey script that loads a set of songs.  Then I just manually switch to each song which I can do in a couple seconds or so.  I created a hotkey that switches to the next song.  Beforehand, I minimize CPU and memory utilization by mixing down all background tracks to one stereo track, which load a lot quicker.  The other remaining tracks are the ones I play along with which are keyboard midi tracks and guitar audio tracks.  Perhaps if you're not doing that, it might help.  

I am not familiar with the Hot Key concept. It used to work quite well with X3, first time using it in Platinum, which should be the same. If you care to share "How to" I"d be obliged

My hotkey works when I have previously loaded multiple songs into Sonar which I do with an Autohotkey script.  By that I mean, if I click on Window on the Title bar, the songs loaded into memory are listed at the bottom.  This probably won't work with playlists because songs in a playlist get loaded sequentially one at a time while you're going thru the playlist.  And if there's no automation, they get unloaded when moving on to next song.  If you can figure out a way to get your setlist loaded ahead of time, without using playlists, then this will probably work.  To test this you could make sure preference-->Advanced--> "Allow Only One Project at a Time" is unchecked.  Load a few songs into Sonar.  Keep in mind that multiple songs in memory will start to load down memory unless you have sufficient horsepower.  Then try Ctrl-F6 or Ctrl-Tab to advance thru songs.  I think those are windows shortcuts.  It's kind of a cluge but it works better for me than playlists because of what I already said before. 
 
Not to further complicate things, in addition I'm using Autohotkey where I defined one key, in this case the ` key, to send Ctrl-Tab to Sonar so that I only have to hit that one key to advance to next song.  The Autohotkey script that loads multiple songs is a whole other story.

I believe Tenfoot used the Playlist function quite a bit playing live, might want to shoot him a PM with any questions/problems. I think he has moved on from SONAR since the guano hit the fan and now uses something else for the playlist function. iirche posted a thread about it. He still visits here every now and then, so he might come across this thread and join in.
 
[edit] here is the thread I was thinking of
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com...solution-m3691123.aspx

If you can get by with 2 tracks then you don't need a DAW to play your backing tracks. I have tried the playlist and it is just too slow for my needs. 
Since around 2006 I have used a laptop running Win Amp to play my backing tracks. It has never crashed or not responded instantly. I now use a little netbook. It doesn't have to be anything powerful to play a wave file. 
 
I use an X keys USB footswitch to start, stop and move to next song. Hands free is a must for me. 
I use Win Amp because it's dependable, easy to make playlists, drag and drop, can make the font as big or small as you want and most importantly,, it stops at the end of the song. You can re arrange the setlist on the fly. 
 
I have always used stereo mixdowns for my solo act. I also play in an acoustic duo and I came up with something that has worked brilliantly. The songs are listening music not dance songs, the drums are not important. So we run an Acoustic bass ( Dim Pro) from the Left channel into a Fender Rumble 100. The Drums and keyboards, right channel, go to a floor wedge so we hear the drums louder than the audience. 
 
The only reason I was hoping the playlist would work was to have 3 or 4 audio channels and midi to control my effects. But it was just way to slow between songs. I like to start the next song the second the last song ends.
I have no problem using a stereo mix because my backing tracks are all midi based instruments, Drums,Bass, Organ,piano and sometimes strings or horns. I have no problem mixing these to my likeing. 
There are a few people here who use it with out issue. 

I thought about the Winamp approach but I need automation for delay, synth modulations, arpeggio synchronization etc, etc.  It's too bad the playlist doesn't work well enough.  I'm wondering if other DAWs would work better for this but I'm not planning on live playing so this will do for now.  Very interested in how others deal with this.  

I have used the playlist function and it can work but normally ends up crashing.  It is definitely very buggy and I would not advise relying on it.
 
 

Just a success story FYI - I used the Playlist (SPLAT) for 2 identical Christmas concerts with choir & orchestra in Dec '17 without issue.  Rehearsal was paramount in making sure it ran as intended.
 
In this case, my projects were 9 songs of 11 tracks each played from my Surface Pro.  No VST FX were used in the projects - instead we utilized the DSP built into the AI (Behringer XR 18).
 
Individual project tracks and direct connections from the mic'd choir were routed through the AI and fed directly to powered mains & monitors and mixed remotely over CAT5 via X-Touch.
 
Every song except for two were started manually with the space bar following narration.  Two songs were setup to automatically start after a 1-second pause.
 
Both concerts proceeded without a hiccup.  I did not time transitions but it worked very well for us.  Our only issues were during rehearsals - it is not most stable thing if you are wanting to change up your setlist on the fly.  You'd be much wiser using a dedicated program for that flexibility.

Hey Bob,
I use to use the playlist feature a lot. I too had the timeline not working problem. I solved it by saving each song with the window of the track view (and I can't remember which) either maximized, or in its own window. Try whichever way you're not.