KT TUNSTALL

I've always loved the idea of 'Guilty Pleasures.'

I really enjoy tech, but I'm not voracious - I'll find stuff because I want to use it, not because I'm interested in what's out there. It's a sort of necessity relationship.

I used to take it much more to heart. Now I realise that negativity has almost everything to do with the person delivering it and very little to do with you yourself.

My father had Parkinson's, though he actually died following a bicycle accident.

It strikes me as very odd for someone to think, 'You know what, if I put on a bikini, I may shift some more records,' but it happens. If people are comfortable with that, fine, but it's not something that would ever cross my mind.

My father passing really, in many ways, was a gift: It made me look at my own happiness and sense of self and realize that I wasn't happy. I had checked all these boxes and achieved all this stuff that I thought made you happy. And I was miserable.

I was adopted. I was born in Edinburgh, and adopted when I was about two weeks old. And it's a good thing, I think, really, that back then, in '75 when I was born, you were really given a lot more information than you're given now when you're adopted. And you know, you can access that information when you're older.

KIN' is basically a kind of rite of passage, scars-and-all celebration of going through difficult things in your life and being better for it.

I would be happy to live in a world with no mirrors, but at the same time, it's great to look good on stage because you feel you're offering more than just the music.

When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.

Most of my friends in London are musicians, but the ones in Scotland have proper jobs.

The only thing I know about being Asian is that my hair is black and my eyelashes are straight and I have strange eyebrows.

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

What was incredible about the Maldives was that the entire island we were on consisted of sand. There didn't seem to be any dirt. You could walk around for hours barefoot with your white trousers skimming the ground, and they'd still be pristine white.

I don't let housekeeping in when I stay in hotels. It cuts down on all the caustic cleaning products and aggressive water usage, and I never use the little plastic bottles of toiletries they set out.

I believe that the Universe is like a single organism, and we are all little nerve endings feeding our experiences back into a whole.

When I tried to get a record deal, only one label wanted me. The rest said 'oh, we've already got a girl with a guitar.' Can you imagine them ever saying that to a guy?

I think there is optimism to what I write.

When you make an album, you have to decide how much you want to give away; you have to decide how much you want to open up. Because the more you open up the more rewarding it can be but the more dangerous it can be. If you really open up and it gets panned it's really painful.

In Scotland, Dad grew courgettes which were the size of my leg. I'd step into the garden and it was like 'The Day of the Triffids.'

The topography of L.A. is fascinating.

It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter. You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you're playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.

Criticism only hurts when there's some truth in it.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn't the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

I often talk too much and don't listen enough.