Folk singer. Raised in North Uist and then in Strathpeffer, where she attended Dingwall Academy, Fowlis read music at the University of Strathclyde. She then improved her Gaelic and studied traditional Scottish music at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye, before returning to Dingwall, where she still lives. In 2000, she joined the all-female group Dòchas as a singer and instrumentalist (oboe, bagpipes and whistle). Her first solo album Mar a Tha Mo Chridhe (2005) gained international acclaim, and a second album Cuilidh was released in 2007. She won Folk Singer of The Year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008. She wrote and performed songs for the Disney Pixar film Brave (2012), about a headstrong Highland princess, and played in the Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, to a television audience estimated at a billion people. Fowlis has subsequently produced other albums, including Gach Sgeul (2014) and Alterum (2017). She has also performed regularly on radio and television.
