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. The London Evening Standard once described her as "one of the scariest women in alternative music."
Garside had an itinerant childhood, growing up in several locations throughout England due to her father's service in the British Army. She spent a significant portion of her adolescence aboard a yacht sailing the high seas with her family. As a teenager, she was discovered by record producer Glyn Johns, and collaborated musically with his son, Ethan, for approximately one year. She later rose to prominence as the lead vocalist of the indie noise rock band Daisy Chainsaw, which she formed in 1989 in London with guitarist Crispin Gray.
After quitting Daisy Chainsaw in 1993, Garside went into seclusion for several years before reuniting with Gray in 1999 to form the rock band Queenadreena, with whom she released four studio albums between 2000 and 2008. In both Daisy Chainsaw and Queenadreena, Garside received critical attention for her alternately harsh and childlike vocals, manic onstage behaviour, and raucous live concerts.
Garside self-released a solo album, Lullabies in a Glass Wilderness, in 2007. The same year, she worked with composer Hector Zazou on the collaboration album Corps Electriques, and began writing and releasing material with her project Ruby Throat, an acoustic collaboration with her partner, American guitarist Chris Whittingham. In late 2007, Ruby Throat released their debut album, The Ventriloquist. Garside concurrently held a mixed media art exhibition, Darling, they've found the body, which was shown at WOOM Gallery in Birmingham. Ruby Throat self-released their subsequent albums Out of a Black Cloud Came a Bird and O' Doubt O' Stars in 2009 and 2012, respectively. During this period, Garside and Whittingham resided on a yacht with their children, sailing the world.
Ruby Throat released their fourth album, Baby Darling Taporo, in 2017. Garside and Whittingham subsequently formed a new musical project called Liar, Flower, under which they released the album Geiger Counter in April 2020. Garside discusses this album at length in a career spanning interview on Conan Neutron's Protonic Reversal.
Early life Katrina Jane Garside was born on 8 July 1968 in Buckrose, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the first of two daughters.England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008, 1968; General Register Office, Southport, England; roll 2A, page 53, line 66. Retrieved on 7 June 2018. She spent her early years in Salisbury, Wiltshire, 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.Garside, KatieJane. Interview with Daisy Chainsaw. Rapido. BBC2. 1991. When she was 11 years old, Garside's father took the family to live aboard a yacht, and they sailed the world for four years. Garside has said that spending her formative years living on the sea gave her a "different perspective on things":
While living on the sea, Garside and her younger sister, Melanie, spent significant amounts of time listening to cassette tapes given to them by their grandfather, largely soundtrack albums to musical films, such as the West Side Story soundtrack by Leonard Bernstein. To pass time, they would often reenact sequences from the film soundtracks with ragdolls. Among the tapes Garside listened to also included albums by Led Zeppelin, which she said "really completes some idea of a story."
After returning to England, Garside's father went abroad to earn money, as the family had returned from sea with "about fifty pounds". Garside's younger sister Melanie was subsequently enrolled in a boarding school where, while in her dormitory, she played a cassette tape of Garside singing along to "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac; record producer and engineer Glyn Johns, whose daughter was also enrolled in the school, was visiting and overheard the tape. Impressed by her singing, Johns contacted Garside, inviting her to join his son, Ethan, who was beginning to make music. Garside, who had recently been offered a scholarship to attend art school, forewent her enrollment and instead spent approximately a year collaborating with Ethan at his father's studio, writing and recording material, which she later described as "atrocious... but we were learning, you know? Learning all of the time. Ethan and I were going to go off to L.A. and become rock stars—and then it all fell apart, as it should do when you're sixteen years old." She subsequently relocated to London, 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". In a review of one of the band's concerts in 1991, an unnamed journalist for Bust magazine wrote: "KatieJane Garside is either in drastic need of psychiatric help or she deserves an Oscar for best actress."
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. Love allegedly cited Garside as one of the "first true riot grrrls" in 1991 and admitted to borrowing heavily from Garside's aesthetic. Garside never associated herself with the movement, which was based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The band released Eleventeen in 1992, which would be their only full-length album before Garside left the band in 1993. The album spawned "Love Your Money", which was the band's most popular single; they performed the song live on British television show The Word in 1992. "Love Your Money" reached number 26 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1992.
After Garside left Daisy Chainsaw, she disappeared from the public eye and music scene, going into seclusion, residing in the Lake District. 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." Due to her manic onstage histrionics and bizarre behaviour in interviews, rumours circulated that Garside had succumbed to mental illness. In later years, she admitted that she had been suffering a nervous breakdown at the time. She lived in the historical Rigg Beck, a notorious retreat for artists and bohemians.
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; in 1999, they formed Queenadreena and released a total of four studio albums over the following decade: Taxidermy (2000), Drink Me (2002), The Butcher and the Butterfly (2005), and Djin. Some time between 1999 and 2002, during the early stages of Queenadreena, Garside resided in Wales for a brief period.
In 2003, Garside contributed guest vocals to the track "Last Leaf Upon the Tree" on the group Minus's album Halldor Laxness.
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 duo released their first album, The Ventriloquist, in November 2007. In contrast to Queenadreena's metal and noise rock style, Ruby Throat is a more ethereal, vocal based project primarily featuring acoustic guitar. The album was well-received, and critics drew comparisons to the work of PJ Harvey and Mazzy Star.
The following year, Corps Electriques, a collaboration album between Garside and French composer Hector Zazou, was released through Signature Records. Ruby Throat subsequently released Tour EP in 2009, which featured handmade artwork, followed by their second full-length record, Out of a Black Cloud Came a Bird (2009). Ruby Throat toured internationally during this period, opening for Rasputina in the United States.
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.
In April 2020, Garside and Whittingham released a full-length album, Geiger Counter, under a new musical project named Liar, Flower.
On May 24, 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 2025.https://sleeplikewolves.katiejanegarside.com/
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."