Thea Eve Gilmore (born 25 November 1979, Oxford, England, to Irish parents) is a British female singer-songwriter. She began her career working in a recording studio, where she was discovered by her now long-time collaborator, producer and sometime co-songwriter Nigel Stonier. Gilmore released her first album, Burning Dorothy, as a teenager in 1998 and over the course of the next four years, released increasingly well-received albums that earned her a reputation in the UK music press but no chart success. She finally made a breakthrough at 23 with the release of Avalanche in August 2003, which became her first album to break into the Official UK Album Chart, at #62, and spawned two minor hit singles.
Gilmore is said to have become interested in music as a result of her father's record collection, which included work by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and Tom Waits, among others. At 16 she left home and began working in a recording studio where she was discovered by her now long-time collaborator, producer and sometime co-songwriter Nigel Stonier, who became her husband in a ceremony in October 2005.
Thea recorded her debut album aged just 17 and then entered a spell of productivity which, in the four and a half years from January 1999 to August 2003, saw her record and release six albums including four "official" releases and two cult albums which were only intended for internet release but which have long since been available in the shops. In 2001, with the release of Rules For Jokers, she hit some kind of national nerve and garnered some attendant airplay but it wasn't until 2003's Avalanche that Thea finally began to make significant waves.
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