In conversation with Lusaint : Learning to Trust the Journey

Words by Kasia Krawczyk

Ahead of her headline show at Oslo Hackney, Lusaint reflects on going from her first-ever gig at Paper Dress Vintage, supporting Calum Scott, and finding a new sense of self on her new EP, The Apothecary pt 2.

Two years ago, Lusaint was standing on a stage at Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney, facing one of her first-ever crowds and wondering how the hell she’d got there.

Tonight, she’s back.

Only this time, she’s headlining.

“I’m really excited. I can’t wait for the show,” she tells me. “Playing with my band again is so exciting. It should be amazing.”

The nerves haven’t disappeared — and Lusaint isn’t pretending they have. But somewhere between that first Hackney show and performing in front of thousands of people, something shifted. The fear is still there, but now there’s confidence sitting alongside it.

“I feel a lot more confident, shall we say,” she laughs. “There’s always a bit of adrenaline and nerves, but you need that, I feel, for every show.”

It’s a feeling she’s had plenty of opportunity to get used to. After headlining her own shows, Lusaint recently joined Calum Scott for a run of UK and European dates, trading intimate rooms for arenas and stadiums.

“Playing huge stadiums like that was such a huge learning curve,” she says. “It was an amazing experience. I did learn a lot, a hell of a lot.”

For an artist still relatively early in her career, being dropped into rooms of that size could have been overwhelming. Instead, Lusaint found herself adapting night after night.

“Just being in front of those crowds was very scary,” she admits. “But when you do keep going and keep going, it becomes easier, and it’s an amazing feeling.”

Then came Wembley.

“I remember, actually, we played Wembley Arena,” she says, almost as if she’s still processing it. “It was honestly the most incredible experience. It almost felt like an out-of-body experience, because I dreamt of playing there.”

The tour also brought her back to Manchester, her hometown, where she performed at the AO Arena.

“And in Manchester, my hometown, I played at the AO Arena, so that was incredible,” she says. “The whole experience was unbelievable.”

There’s an irony to getting comfortable with something that once terrified you. Lusaint laughs when she describes the strange moment when performing to huge crowds began to feel almost normal.

“When it starts to become easier, you start to think, am I not doing my job properly?” she jokes. “Because it’s starting to feel easier. At the beginning, it was the scariest moment of my life.”

That growing confidence isn’t just visible on stage. It’s also woven into the music.

Lusaint’s first EP, Self-Sabotage, came from a period when she was still trying to understand herself and her place as an artist. There was hurt in those songs — and, looking back, a lot of uncertainty.

“When I released the first EP, Self-Sabotage, I think there was a lot of hurt going on at the time,” she says. “Figuring out who I was as an artist, understanding myself as an artist.”

Now, she hears those songs differently.

“Even now, when I sing those songs, there’s such a different feeling towards that music,” she says. “An amazing feeling, because I feel like, again, I’ve learned so much about myself.”

Her forthcoming second EP, The Apothecary pt 2, finds her somewhere else entirely.

“Healing” is the word she keeps coming back to.

“Moving into the second EP, The Apothecary, it’s definitely been a huge healing process for me,” Lusaint says.

The past couple of years have given her plenty to process — personally, professionally and creatively. Rather than hiding that evolution, she’s turned it into the material.

“There are songs on this EP that feel really special to me,” she says. “Through that healing journey, it’s been such a mad couple of years, and learning so much about myself has given me the opportunity to write these songs.”

It’s perhaps the clearest picture of where Lusaint is right now: still ambitious, still hungry, but less interested in pretending she has everything figured out.

If she could go back to the beginning of her career, she wouldn’t tell her younger self to work harder, move faster or chase bigger stages.

She’d simply tell her to breathe.

“Take each day as it comes,” she says.

It’s advice that sounds simple until you consider how quickly things have changed for her.

“There is so much that you learn on this job every day, some of it good, some of it bad, but you do learn so much about yourself.”

The music industry has also taught her something less romantic: you need thick skin.

There are highs, disappointments, unexpected opportunities and moments when everything can change within the space of a few weeks. Lusaint has learned to take it all as part of the deal.

And despite everything that’s happened, she still sounds slightly stunned when she looks back at it.

“Looking at where my career is now, it feels very surreal,” she says. “Everything that I’ve achieved over the last couple of years, especially in Europe, has been something that I never would have dreamed of happening.”

Even tonight’s headline show carries a little bit of that disbelief.

“To look at the difference, like we said before, of my first show in Hackney to doing this now, it’s amazing.”

But Lusaint isn’t stopping to admire the view for too long.

She’s already thinking about what’s next.

“I would love to be able to create an album,” she says. “That’s always been my dream.”

Then there’s Glastonbury. And Later… with Jools Holland. And, inevitably, Wembley comes up again.

“That is definitely the dream,” she says when asked about one day headlining the stadium herself.

For an artist who has already gone from a first Hackney show to standing on the Wembley stage in the space of just a few years, it’s hardly an outlandish ambition.

But tonight, the next milestone is much closer to home.

Oslo Hackney.

Her band.

Her own crowd.

Two years after playing Paper Dress Vintage, Lusaint is back in Hackney — only now, she’s the one headlining.

And perhaps that’s the most telling part of her story so far. The dreams haven’t changed. She’s simply getting closer to them.

Photo by @naturalist.jpeg