KatieJane Garside

Katrina Jane Garside (born 8 July 1968) is an English singer, songwriter, and visual artist. She is known for her musical projects in an eclectic range of genres including noise rock, alternative metal, acoustic, and neofolk, and vocals that range from childlike whispers to harsh scream singing.

Early life Katrina Jane Garside was born on 8 July 1968 in Buckrose, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the first of two daughters. though her family relocated frequently as her father was in the British Army; he also had a musical background, having played in local bands in London. When she was 11 years old, Garside has said that spending her formative years living on the sea gave her a "different perspective on things": To pass time, they would often reenact sequences from the film soundtracks with ragdolls. working odd jobs while seeking to make a living as a singer.

Musical career 19891995: Daisy Chainsaw

Garside formed Daisy Chainsaw in 1989 after responding to an advert in a newspaper by guitarist Crispin Gray. Bassist Richard Adams joined the band, along with Canadian drummer Vince Johnson. The group quickly became well known for their raucous live performances, and her appearance described as a "Gothic street urchin image, complete with dead flowers meshed into her dreadlocked hair".

The band toured the United Kingdom with Hole and Mudhoney to promote the album prior to its release, and Garside drew comparisons from British press to Hole's frontwoman Courtney Love. A self-described recluse, Garside later commented that "I could be anywhere, really, and it wouldn't make a lot of difference, so I don't know necessarily that much about the country that I was born in and that I've lived in."

In retrospect, Garside commented that, had she not left the band, "it would have killed me... Because I didn't write the songs [in Daisy Chainsaw] I could never give enough, never go far enough. I couldn't bleed in words, I couldn't bleed in lyrics—I could only bleed in performance, and that meant attacking [myself], literally."

While living in the Lake District, Garside began to write her own material, as well as collaborating with the industrial band Test Department in 1995 on their album Totality.

19972007: Queenadreena

Garside had no intentions of returning to music until the late 1990s when she returned to London and was contacted by former guitarist Crispin Gray; Some time between 1999 and 2002, during the early stages of Queenadreena, Garside resided in Wales for a brief period.

After recording Live at the ICA, which featured a live 2005 performance by Queenadreena at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the band released two more albums, Ride a Cockhorse, a compilation which featured unreleased 4-track demos, and Djin, which was their final studio release before disbanding around 2009.

Garside's solo work of this time includes a collection of home recordings called Lalleshwari/Lullabies in a Glasswilderness released in 2006. Complementing this release was a collection of short films made by KatieJane.

2008present: Ruby Throat and Liar, Flower

In 2007, shortly before the release of Queenadreena's final album Djin, Garside formed the musical duo Ruby Throat with Chris Whittingham, an American guitarist from Hawaii whom she met while he was busking at a train platform on London Underground. Garside commented that her encounter with Whittingham came "after being on my knees on the floor, praying for an intervention, because everything [was] so fused and knotted. And I needed a cosmic intervention—but it happened, in fact, that day. I found him, and he's so extraordinary at everything."

The following year, Corps Electriques, a collaboration album between Garside and French composer Hector Zazou, was released through Signature Records.

In 2012, they released their third album, O' Doubt O' Stars, which featured a limited edition packaging with a book of lithographs and Garside's art, as well as handwritten lyrics. In April of the same year, the band announced they were recording new material via their official Facebook page. In 2014 a new track, "Secret Fires", was released on the third Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions compilation Axels & Sockets.

In November 2016, Garside announced the forthcoming release of a limited edition book of 34 poems entitled A whispering frayed edge in 2017. In November 2017, Ruby Throat released their fourth studio album, Baby Darling Taporo. Garside granted an extensive interview to Vice in October 2018, during which she divulged that she and Whittingham still resided on their boat Iona with their children, and that they had recently completed an extensive sailing trip across the world.

On May 24th, 2025, Garside revealed an upcoming full-length album on her social media and personal page entitled Ornamental Gardens. The album is being released under the name Liar, Flower and is slated to be released in September of 2025.

Other works Visual art Garside held a mixed media art exhibition at the WOOM Gallery in Birmingham in 2007, titled Darling, they've found the body, featuring a collection of photographs, film, and other visual works.

Writing and graphic novels In 2005, Garside collaborated with comics artist Daniel Schaffer on the graphic novella Indigo Vertigo, published by Image Comics in August 2007. Describing the graphic novel, Schaffer said it is "designed to communicate on a number of different levels. KatieJane's words are hypnotic and they cut to the bone, but they're always in motion, the meanings varying with each reading."

In 2017, a book profiling Garside's career was released entitled Under a Floorboard World: The Career of Katie Jane Garside. It was released via Breakbeat Books, which is the publishing name of independent author Charlie Bramley. The book "provides a long overdue exploration into the career of Garside, offering rich analysis and original insight". It also features an original interview with Garside, undertaken during the writing period. The same year, she issued A whispering frayed edge, a poetry collection released in a limited edition run.

Artistry Vocals, style and lyrical themes quote= I'm a meditator. I have my stories, and I have my narrative, and I'm happy with that. And I'm happy to share it, although I don't expect everyone to buy into it. But I think that there's power in stories, so I talk to my people and I take directives from them, and they change shape quite a lot. But I give myself over to them, particularly in creating my own narrative through my music. — –Garside on her relationship to her audience, 2020 particularly on her work with Queenadreena; a concert review published by The Guardian noted: "It's surprising that such a loud noise can come from such a small person." "I do strain my voice doing bad work," Garside commented, "[but] sometimes the impulse is too huge [and] I just have to." Some critics have likened her vocals to those of Macy Gray. In a 2020 interview with American Songwriter, she divulged that one of her earliest musical inspirations was Petula Clark's "Downtown", as well as the works of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. She has also stated she is an admirer of Courtney Love, whose band, Hole, Garside toured with while performing in Daisy Chainsaw: "[She is] a force of nature. I adore her. I'm in awe of her... She is so powerful... I'm so grateful to have been there and shared all the grimy dressing rooms with her."

In a 2020 interview, Garside cited Nico's The Marble Index (1968) as a seminal influence on her work.

Performances Garside has been noted throughout her career for her raucous, "carnivalesque" live performances. While in Daisy Chainsaw, she engaged in spectacles such as drilling doll heads onstage and drinking juice out of baby bottles. The group's raucous concerts would sometimes result in Garside performing self-mutilation onstage. Russell Senior, guitarist of Pulp, recalled that at one 1989 concert in London, Garside wrapped the microphone cord so tightly around her neck onstage that she lost consciousness, and the show had to be ended early.

Commenting on live performances, she said in 2002: "I know what turns me on, and it's that fine line, that point where you're falling off the edge of a cliff, where your stomach turns, I'm always trying to find that point in music. You rarely hit it, and again, that's the joy of playing live, because there you can be just at that point where you've lost balance. I'm always walking between polarities, trying to find the opposing sides." In her early career, Garside's stage presence was noted by critics for its disheveled appearance, marked by torn clothing and her body covered in dirt.

Despite her often animated and aggressive performances, Garside has admitted to having stage fright, particularly in her early career: "I feel things really intensely, and the absolute horror of walking onstage—you know, that sort of sense of exposure and being on a precipice...it just flicked a switch in me... if I got out of my own way and stopped trying to try, I just had access to a big 'let[ting] go.'" In a 2003 interview, she elaborated:

Personal life In 2011, Garside gave birth to a daughter with her partner and musical collaborator Chris Whittingham. As of 2012, the couple resided on a ketch named Iona, along with their two children, then aged 10 years and 10 months. The boat was damaged in a storm in St Mawes, Cornwall in June 2012; they made repairs in Falmouth and left England shortly afterwards with the intention to sail around the world.

Garside revealed in a 2020 interview that, throughout her touring career, she spent approximately a decade "drinking really heavily" and that she felt the discussion of "drugs and abstinence is huge, for all of us," adding: "These days, I drink very, very little... I meditate, and that's what gets me high... [I think] you do have to possibly go through it a little bit to find your way out. It's taken me a long time to find the root, but I've found it and it certainly doesn't involve drugs or alcohol at this point in my life."

Discography signifies extended play

KatieJane Garside performing live with Daisy Chainsaw in London, 1990.

Daisy Chainsaw LoveSickPleasure (1991) Pink Flower (1992) Eleventeen (1992)

Queenadreena Taxidermy (2000) Drink Me (2002) The Butcher and the Butterfly (2005) Live at the ICA (2005) Ride a Cock Horse (2007) Djin (2008)

Solo Lalleshwari/Lullabies in a Glasswilderness (2005) Lalleshwari/Lullabies in a Glass Wilderness (2006) Corps Electriques (2007)

Ruby Throat The Ventriloquist (2007) Tour EP (2009) O' Doubt O' Stars (2012) The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project: Axels & Sockets Baby Darling Taporo (2017) Stone Dress (2018)

Liar, Flower Geiger Counter (2020) Ornamental Gardens (2025)

Collaborations Creaming Jesus – Dead Time (1991) Creaming Jesus – Guilt By Association (1992) Frostbite – The Second Coming (1993) The Sacred Sawdust Ring – The Greatest Show Of Truth (1994) Test Dept – Totality 1 (1995) Test Dept – Totality (1995) Test Dept – Totality 1 & 2: The Mixes (1997) Mínus – Halldór Laxness (2004) Ghostigital – In Cod We Trust (2006) Stories From The Moon – Stories From The Moon (2006) Jeff Zentner – The Dying Days Of Summer (2009) Kittens in the Bin – Yellow Snake (2021)