Fly poster Paloma Faith lands back in Hackney

Paloma Faith. Photograph: Kezia Levitas

From St Trinian’s Emo to pitch-perfect songstress, Paloma Faith has starred on both stage and screen, defining her style as “a hyper-real idea of the silver screen glamorising reality”.

Hackney-born Paloma performed for the Live Lounge at the BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra Academy in Hackney last month.

The Hackney Citizen caught up with the singer after her captivating performance. Recently nominated for a Brit Award as Best British Female, she was modest about her accomplishments.

“It was more than I ever realised that I could ever achieve,” she said.

Laughing, she recounted her early experiences trying to make it in the music industry: “I used to fly poster all of my own gigs with a hoodie on in Hackney but I got in trouble once for doing it, by the police, so I had to go all around Hackney taking them down again.”

Now having shared a stage with the likes of Annie Lennox and Cee-Lo Green – experiences that “humbled” her – Paloma is set to headline her very own tour of the UK and Ireland next year.

She was reluctant to give away specifics, but she did let on that the material she’ll feature in her tour includes some songs from her first album and her new album in its entirety.

Clearly excited to be sharing her music with fans around the country, she beamed: “I’m hoping that there’ll be lots of singing along as that’s my favourite part.”

Paloma gets absorbed into her own world when performing, and this time she’ll truly be the star of her own show. She designed the set for the tour herself. As a self-confessed film fanatic, she explained that she wanted to create a narrative for her show.

Her love for film was also what inspired her new album Fall to Grace, released earlier this year.

Paloma said that when she approached her producers for the album she told them she wanted to turn her life experiences into a soundtrack.

She also tells how she was was proactive about making her name in the music industry. When she couldn’t get booked for gigs, she made her own club nights.

She spent two weeks clicking ‘invite’ for 35,000 people to create a big buzz for one of her events.

The one piece of advice that she found invaluable was that in music everyone does the same thing. “You’ve got to do all of these things, plus a bit more and that is how to make yourself stand out,” she said.

In the next ten years, Paloma sees herself with an established career. For now, she has the rest of this year to look forward to and her headlining tour in 2013 that looks set to take her to new heights.

For more about Paloma Faith:

On the web: palomafaith.com
Twitter @Palomafaith