For Lily Lyons, music feels like hope - or perhaps, possibility. Growing up split between London and Somerset, making weekly eight hour drives across the country between the base she knew with her mother and the faraway town her father had left for, she remembers the comfort of the car stereo on the open road. As she grew older, struggling to fully realise herself in the world and to pick apart the often knotty and complicated relationships that had formed around her, music was the thing that offered a window to an alternative. 

Influenced by those tender auteurs of her childhood, plus their modern counterparts like Big Thief, Nick Hakim and Kansas singer Krystle Warren, by the end of her first year Lily had gathered enough confidence to perform her own composition at the college’s showcase for Island Records. The label’s then-president Darcus Beese - the man responsible for signing Amy Winehouse, Florence and the Machine and more - took a shine to her. It was Lily’s first ever gig. 

“He was like, ‘You’re fucking great!’ and that was so encouraging. Amy Winehouse was my idol growing up, so that was so cool to me, and then we went for coffee the next year and talked about my plans,” she laughs with still visible disbelief. The good fortune seemingly kept on growing when, straight out of school, she was snapped up by Sony subsidiary Black Butter Records. But after the relationship crumbled, it was Lily’s now-home of Fiction that would pick her up and give the singer-songwriter the support and steady framework she truly needed to flourish.