There’s a moment in conversation with Lost Girl where time bends. Not in the dramatic way artists sometimes perform wisdom, but in something quieter, a pause between thoughts, a sentence that feels lived in. She speaks about her past with the kind of clarity that usually takes decades to earn. “I felt like a 45-year-old woman at 16,” she says with a laugh that carries more memory than humor. “Like I’d seen everything already.”

It was something that existed long before the songs. Growing up in Reading, just outside London, she was a teenager navigating situations that arrived far too early: older crowds, reckless decisions, experiences that pushed her to grow up faster than she should have. “The name was born years before I even knew it,” she explains. For a time, the chaos even showed up physically, weight dropping, people around her worrying, while she moved through life detached from her own wellbeing. Then one morning something shifted. She woke up with a realization that felt like survival. “I just knew I couldn’t be that version of myself anymore,” she says. “I had to become something else to escape the hell I felt like I was living in.”

Music became the place where the truth could finally exist out loud. One of the first songs she ever wrote, 2012 Summer / Lessons in Love, was a raw confession about her teenage years, revealing experiences her family hadn’t known about. When her mother heard it, the reaction was shock. “She looked at me like… that happened?” Lost Girl remembers. Writing stopped being a hobby after that moment. It became therapy, a way of processing things that conversation couldn’t hold. Ironically, she had always been the “good student”, the one expected to succeed academically, maybe even attend Oxford to study law. She had the grades, the discipline, the future mapped out. But music pulled harder. Walking away from that path didn’t just mean choosing art; it meant redefining who she was allowed to become.

Early in her career she leaned toward genres that allowed her to hide inside the production, UK garage, softer vocal spaces where she didn’t have to push her voice too far. “I didn’t believe in myself enough vocally at that time,” she admits. But eventually the truth caught up with her. “I came into this industry to sing,” she says now. “So I want to sing.” That shift became real when she stepped onto arena stages touring with Craig David across the UK. Performing to massive crowds forced her to confront a different version of herself, one capable of commanding a room of thousands. “It showed me that I could actually do this,” she says.

In the digital age, careers can change overnight. For Lost Girl, that moment came when her remix of Chris Brown’s Under the Influence exploded online, bringing a surge of listeners and attention within hours. The timing felt surreal because behind the scenes she had been close to losing her label. Suddenly the narrative shifted. “It made them want to give me another chance,” she says. The moment proved something simple but powerful: when people connect with the emotion in the music, everything else becomes secondary.

That connection began crossing borders when she visited the United States for a press run that moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta to New York. What surprised her most wasn’t the travel, it was the recognition. People who had never met her before already understood the energy she carried. “Being welcomed like that made me feel like maybe I can exist here too,” she says. New York, in particular, left a lasting impression. If she ever leaves London, she says, that’s where she imagines herself landing.

Outside of music, fashion has always been part of her language. At New York Fashion Week, moving between shows and absorbing the atmosphere of design and identity, she felt the same creative electricity she feels in the studio. Clothing, for her, is more than style; it’s expression. Earlier in her life, oversized clothing started as protection, a way to hide a body she felt uncertain about. Over time, that aesthetic evolved into something empowering. The androgynous silhouettes she wears now feel deliberate, confident. “How you dress is part of your identity,” she says.

Her upcoming project, EGO, reflects another stage of that identity. The songs were written during a time when she built emotional armor, becoming the version of herself that would hurt others before she could be hurt again. “These songs were written from my ego,” she explains. But the project isn’t meant to celebrate that mindset; it documents it, capturing a moment before deeper self-reflection arrives.

When asked how she hopes people will look back on this chapter of her life, Lost Girl doesn’t talk about success or accolades. Instead, she talks about honesty. “I want people to see a young girl trying to figure herself out,” she says. After a pause, she adds something that feels less like an answer and more like a philosophy. “We’re never truly found. In every season of your life, you lose yourself and find yourself again.”