54 Facts About KT Tunstall

Kate Victoria "KT" Tunstall was born on 23 June 1975 and is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician.

KT Tunstall first gained attention with a 2004 live solo performance of her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later.

KT Tunstall has appeared in two episodes of the comedy series This is Jinsy on Sky Atlantic.

KT Tunstall won the BRIT Award for Best British Female Artist and the European Border Breakers Award, both in 2006.

KT Tunstall was born to a half-Chinese, half-Scottish mother, Carol Ann Orr, who was from Hong Kong, and a Northern Irish father, John Corrigan, from Belfast.

KT Tunstall's parents met while her mother was working as a dancer in Penthouse bar in Edinburgh, where her father was a barman.

KT Tunstall was born at Edinburgh's Western General Hospital and at 18 days old, was placed for adoption by her mother with a family in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland.

KT Tunstall's adoptive father, David Tunstall, was a physics lecturer at the University of St Andrews, and her adoptive mother, Rosemarie Tunstall, was a primary school teacher; they already had adopted another child who became her older brother Joe, and went on to have another son, Dan.

KT Tunstall has said: "My earliest memories are Californian", from a sabbatical that her father took at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1979.

KT Tunstall was musically oriented and her adoptive parents supported her interest.

KT Tunstall recollected that she asked for a piano when she was four.

KT Tunstall grew up in St Andrews, Fife, attending Lawhead Primary, then Madras College in St Andrews and the High School of Dundee, but she spent her last year of high school in the United States at the Kent School, a selective boarding school in Kent, Connecticut.

KT Tunstall spent time busking on Church Street in Burlington, Vermont, and at a commune in rural Vermont.

KT Tunstall focused on songwriting, as well as performing with members of the fledgling Fence Collective.

KT Tunstall had lived with Gordon Anderson of the Beta Band, and the Aliens, whom the song "Funnyman", on her second studio album Drastic Fantastic, is about.

KT Tunstall toured with the klezmer band Oi Va Voi, and stayed with them while they were making their second studio album, Laughter Through Tears.

However, KT Tunstall had decided to sign with a US major, and initially passed up the offer.

KT Tunstall's first appearance of note was a solo performance of her folk blues song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later.

KT Tunstall had only 24 hours to prepare after scheduled performer Nas cancelled.

KT Tunstall performed as a one-person band using a guitar, a tambourine, and a loop pedal.

KT Tunstall sang with Scottish band Travis on their fifth studio album The Boy with No Name, on the track "Under the Moonlight", a song written by Susie Hug, formerly of Katydids.

KT Tunstall commented that the photograph for the album cover was influenced by the rock star Suzi Quatro.

In 2008, KT Tunstall recorded a song for the double album Songs for Survival, in support of the indigenous rights organisation Survival International.

KT Tunstall discusses various issues concerning our culture of consumption and greed, our relation to the earth and the importance of indigenous rights in the world today.

On 11 February 2010, the Daily Record reported that KT Tunstall had recorded her new album in Berlin's Hansa Studios.

KT Tunstall said that Tiger Suit's title is inspired by a recurring dream she had, before discovering that 2010 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

KT Tunstall said that while writing and recording the album, she experimented with a new sound she called "Nature techno", which mixes organic instrumentation with electronic and dance textures, similar in style to the work of Icelandic singer Bjork.

At a media showcase in London, KT Tunstall offered an unusual description of the songs from her forthcoming third album: "Like Eddie Cochran working with Leftfield".

KT Tunstall has been a panellist on the BBC Two comedy music show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, first on series 21 episode 8, and on series 24 episode 10.

In 2013, KT Tunstall teamed up again with Gelb in Tucson, Arizona for his twenty-first studio The Coincidentalist, and they recorded a duet, "The 3 Deaths of Lucky".

KT Tunstall appeared on the second episode of This is Jinsy on 5 February 2014, as bearded folk musician Briiian Raggatan.

Over a year after her album's release, KT Tunstall left Edinburgh to move to Los Angeles and began a new career as a soundtrack composer.

From August to September 2015, KT Tunstall embarked on a small US Tour, made up of eleven dates, playing songs from her various albums and EPs, such as The Scarlet Tulip EP.

On 16 June 2016, KT Tunstall released the Golden State EP before the album release.

KT Tunstall released her fifth studio album, Kin, on 9 September 2016.

In 2017, KT Tunstall announced a trilogy of studio albums following the themes of soul, body and mind.

KT Tunstall released the second, Wax, with the theme of body, on 5 October 2018.

On 29 August 2019, KT Tunstall opened for Squeeze at Tanglewood.

In March 2020, KT Tunstall announced she would start recording the third and final studio album of the trilogy by fall, with the theme of mind.

In December 2021, KT Tunstall performed at the New Year's Eve Times Square Times Square Ball celebration in New York.

Since March 2022, KT Tunstall has narrated adverts for car company Skoda.

KT Tunstall announced her seventh studio album, the third and final album on the Soul, Body and Mind trilogy, would be called Nut.

In November 2023, KT Tunstall was announced as a contributor to a revised version of Clueless, a new musical adapted from the 1995 film.

KT Tunstall is known for her live performances, using an Akai E2 Headrush loop pedal which she affectionately calls "Wee Bastard", in her solo performances and with a full four-piece backing band, as well as her two backing vocalists, Cat Sforza and Ami Richardson.

KT Tunstall has since performed at many large concerts and festivals such as the Hogmanay Edinburgh Concert in 2005.

KT Tunstall tracked down her biological mother, Carol Ann, located her in either 1996 or 1998 and learned that Carol was married to cab driver David Orr and had borne three more children.

KT Tunstall has been critical of the British National Party and publicly disowned Orr in 2010 because of his decision to run as a BNP candidate in the general election for Livingston.

KT Tunstall learned that her biological father, John Corrigan had died in 2002, but she was united with two half-sisters, Siobhan and Lesley-Anne, by John's second marriage.

KT Tunstall's adoptive father, David Tunstall, was a lecturer in physics at St Andrews University.

In 2003, KT Tunstall began dating Luke Bullen, the drummer in her band.

In 2008, KT Tunstall joined the Disko Bay Cape Farewell expedition to the West Coast of Greenland.

KT Tunstall is a patron of the Educational Wealth Fund.

In 2008, KT Tunstall started experiencing problems with the hearing in her left ear.

KT Tunstall gained more nominations in 2007 and 2008: a 2007 Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", and another BRIT nomination for British Female Solo Artist, the award she had won in 2006.