When we think of singer/songwriters with around 11,000 monthly listeners on Spotify we tend not to imagine 20-year-olds still studying in college. LAOISE isn’t like most 20 year olds.
Sitting in a quirky city-centre café, the silver haired young talent sat with a freshly brewed Americano with a drop of soy milk on the side. Surrounded by all of 5 other customers and the sound of a noisy coffee machine LAOISE prepared to tell me about her continuing journey through the world of music and entertainment.
LAOISE’s relationship with music goes as far back as her early childhood, coming from a musical family. “I started playing the fiddle when I was about 5. My Mum comes from a traditional background and my Dad taught himself guitar in his late teens”. She followed in her father’s footsteps and taught herself guitar and would go on to have piano, guitar and synth at her disposal.
Currently studying music at Bimm Dublin, she began writing music at the age of 15, citing a wide range of influences from Bob Dylan to Fleetwood Mac to 80s pop.
LAOISE released her first single YOU in 2016. Minimalist yet euphoric, the synth driven YOU has since obtained over 165,000 plays on Spotify while the live music video which was published In January has already obtained 1,900 views on YouTube.
While the pulsating power track maintains a professional and polished sound, LAOISE recorded it in extremely modest conditions: “I recorded it with my boyfriend Sean. He had just started up kind of a studio in his house and that’s where we recorded it, just on one laptop with one mic.”
LAOISE admits that she has always wanted to pursue a career in entertainment, saying that she always wanted to perform – but she originally wanted to pursue acting.
The Galway performer acknowledged the struggle that came with putting her music out into the public. “I set up my [Facebook] page professionally when I was just coming out of school. If I tried to push it too much in school I would have been scared”. She also believed both being young and living in Ireland could possibly be a factor that discourages people from expressing themselves saying “I think that we’re too hard on ourselves sometimes.”
LAOISE has lived in Dublin for over a year now and the move has been beneficial, paving the way for live performances in roooms such as The Workman’s club and Whelans. Comparing Dublin to Galway, LAOISE talks about how “It’s a different music scene. There’s just more room for different genres.”
LAOISE is vocal about all the other components of her art that extend beyond music. The confident yet reserved singer has collaborated with other artists and friends that have experience in fields like photography, videography and musical performance all of which have helped to bring another dimension to her music .
No stranger to hard work, LAOISE admits that she needs to be kept busy. “I definitely need to keep tipping away and know that I’m progressing.” How she stays motivated?“I guess at times my motivation is panic,” she jokes, “But sometimes it’s just hearing a song or hearing something cool and thinking ‘right I wanna do that too’”.
Along with her band mates LAOISE is preparing for the release of her EP ‘Halfway’ and although she admits that she doesn’t like looking too much into the future, there is no doubt that big things lie ahead for LAOISE, and there’s no chance she’ll be slowing down anytime soon.
LAOISE’s new single “Halfway” is out now
Ian Mangan
