How can I recover data from 1.5 years ago?

You would have had to save the data on a computer/external drive. iCloud is a syncing service, so it will only have the data that is currently on your device. If your device is damaged, iCloud is used to restore it to the exact same configuration of the last backup. Another use for iCloud is to make the same data is available on multiple devices for easy sharing of your data. There will be nothing to recover from 1.5 years ago on iCloud.