A refreshing, unorthodox counter to the typical pop artist, Tilly Kingston was born for the stage – a good thing, too, seeing as she has spent her whole life sleeping in a bed just a few feet away from one.
Having grown up living above local Feathers music venue in the unassuming city of Lichfield, 15 miles north of the rock’n’roll epicentre of Birmingham, it’s little surprise that the charismatic 18-year-old cannot remember a time when music was not the dominant fixture in her life. With a ‘60s- and ’70s-loving dad, and an older brother obsessed with the punk and emo of the 2000s, her musical education was both thorough and varied, making her a home-schooled student of classic songwriters such as David Bowie and The Beatles as well as of modern-day iconic frontmen like Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Ghost’s Tobias Forge during field trips to gigs and the legendary Download festival. “People ask me what growing up around so much music was like, and I don’t know how to answer it,” she laughs of a life soundtracked by the downstairs hum of amps and applause of a crowd. “I’ve never known any different.”