The daughter of a pilot, Sandi Thom was at college in Aberdeen when she developed her interest in music, singing and playing keyboards in a 1970s covers band, The Residents. At 17 she was the youngest student accepted at Liverpool's Institute of Performing Arts, and also sang in a gospel choir and performed You'll Never Walk Alone in front of 40,000 Liverpool soccer fans at Anfield. She moved to London to further her career and in 2005 released her debut single I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair). At first it wasn't successful but everything changed after an enterprising internet initiative called 21 Nights From Tooting, involving 21 shows broadcast live from her basement flat in Tooting. The webcasts gained a cult following which resulted in widespread publicity and a major label deal with Sony. On its re-release I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker went to Number 1 in the UK charts and Thom's album Smile...It Confuses People topped the album charts. Subsequent singles What If I'm Right and Lonely Girl failed to achieve the same degree of success and second album The Pink & The Lily also faltered commercially. Thom then left Sony complaining the label wanted her to make "bubblegum" music and released her bluesy third album Merchants & Thieves independently in 2010.