Liya Shapiro Doesn't Want to Be Your Indie Darling
- Liya Shapiro
- Sep 1, 2025
- 6 min read
words by Karla Pichardo, photos by Errin Yesilkaya
This interview is available in print, you can order your copy of Hedonist Magazine here.
When I meet up with singer-songwriter Liya Shapiro at her cosy Islington pad, she’s wearing a vintage Yale jumper and faded floral trousers. She greets me with a warm hug – briefly interrupted by Shushu, her portly black cat who treads at her ankles.
Her apartment is a sensory wonderland; she’s laid out a gorgeous dinner of Waldorf salad, braised pak choi, saffron rice and red curry – topped off by cherry-flavoured beer in quirky glasses. Her walls are lined with posters depicting black cats throughout history, complimented by a mini-herb garden she’s growing in her living room. She gives me a quick tour and shows me her walk-in closet, which is full of gorgeous suedes, leathers, sequins and furs – both new and vintage. “I’m trying to do a spring clean,” she says, “but so many of these pieces have sentimental value to me, and it’s hard to let them go.”
Liya came onto the scene in 2021 with the release of her first song, Mirror. Since then, with the release of two more singles, The Thing and Rose Garden, in 2024, she has been coming into her own, carving out a space for her ethereal, seductive, and haunting tunes in London’s otherwise stoic indie rock scene.
Her latest single, Burning Bridges, was released earlier this summer, and her latest Hold Me Tight, is set to be released on 19 September. Still buzzing with the success of her first sold-out headline show at The Troubadour, she’s stepping into the next season with real momentum. Over cherry beer, we talked about her career thus far and what’s next.
So, how did this all begin? When did you know you wanted to pursue music full-time?
I’ve always loved music. I come from a classical background. My mum is a violinist and instilled this musical tradition into me. I went to music school, played piano, and was in the choir, but then I decided to quit and do ballroom dancing instead because I liked the dresses.
I never really thought I could actually be a musician, but ever since I was a teenager, I had this fixation on rock bands. I was mesmerised by their stage presence and thought it was the coolest thing in the world, but I just never saw myself being like that. But one night, when I just finished my undergraduate degree, I went to a Miles Kane concert. The Mysterines were opening, and I became enamoured with frontwoman Lia Metcalfe. I left the concert thinking I wanted to be her.
I just didn’t know how that could happen. I had some skills from my training, but I’ve never tried to write my own songs. And it was kind of a perfect storm because that summer, I experienced this intense, unrequited love. I fell in love with this guy who didn’t care about me at all, and I was completely immersed and distraught by it, so I just started writing. I kind of looked at it like writing poetry, and then one day, I sat at the piano and was like, let’s just do this.
I had a few songs under my belt that I made in my spare time until I met my amazing friend Anastasia (professionally known as Saya Siiang). She has been such a massive help to this day – she produces a lot of my songs, and she was the one who convinced me that I could actually try to make this my life.
You have this deeply academic background; how does that translate into your music?
There’s a large visual component to everything I do, which I think is inspired by art history. I’m obsessed with the Pre-Raphaelites and Aubrey Beardsley, for example, and I try to make sure every song has its own visual representation. I’m also a massive music theory nerd in relation to more technical elements like chord progressions and key changes, so I sometimes obsess over those details. And I’m always trying to pepper in literary and poetic references in my songs.
What genre do you consider yourself to be?
It’s tricky. I feel like a different person every day. One day, I can be fun; the next day, I can feel elegant; and the next, I can feel a bit ‘hipster’. It’s weird; I would consider myself to be ‘post-genre’, but if I had to categorise myself, it would be indie. I have a lot of influences – from Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey to classical musicians to Siouxsie and the Banshees.
How does your cultural background play a role in your music?
I’m an Eastern European Ashkenazi Jew and love Jewish folk music. It’s kind of similar to Middle Eastern music, especially when it comes to the modes, like the freygish and harmonic minor scales – they give the music this really distinctive sound. Both styles let you be a lot freer with tonality, sort of shifting between modes and tonal centres. Jazz is similar in how it lets you move around harmonically, which I find really fun.
You have a new song coming out next month. Do you want to tell me more about that?
Yeah, it’s called Hold Me Tight, and it's a pretty special one because it combines two very different moments in my life – the verses were written seven years ago when I was stuck in heartbreak, but the chorus came to me more recently in this really spontaneous way. It’s about that longing to be held and really seen, not just physically but emotionally too. Even though the lyrics are heavy, the music itself is upbeat and groovy – it’s almost defiant. It’s me saying, “I’m not going to drown in this sadness, I’m going to move through it.”
Your lyrics are very emotional. Do you consider yourself an emotional person?
I’m a deeply emotional person, even though I’m quite guarded – especially around people I don’t know very well. And that’s come to bite me in the ass, in the sense that I’ll just keep everything to myself until it boils over. This is kind of where the music comes in – I see it as quite healing.
They say that TikTok is a necessary evil for musicians today. How do you balance writing lyrics that are emotionally vulnerable with making music that’s algorithm-friendly?
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and I don’t really try to make music so that it will stick on TikTok. I just use it to connect to my audience – I don’t want to water anything down to connect to a broader demographic. My social media presence is also more than just my music; I use it to share snippets of my life.
Who would you say your target audience is?
I don’t know if I have a target audience; I want to make music that emotionally resonates with people. I’m really candid about love, loss, nostalgia and mental health in my songs, so I would want to build a community of people who either have experienced similar feelings or just enjoy music that makes them feel something, even if they’re not sure what it is.
Do you have any routines you stick to?
Creatively, not really. If something comes to me, I’ll just work and work until I have a finished product. I can go two weeks without writing something and then write two songs in a day. But because I pull all of my own stunts in terms of promotion and the business side of things, I need to build a routine around that.
Where do you see your career now? And where do you see it going?
I just want to build something beautiful. I have a trusted community of people around me – friends and fellow musicians. And I just want to keep chipping away at it. I’m experimenting with my sound and staying flexible, open, and porous. I have big plans, and it feels like I’m making headway.
After dinner, we go outside for a cigarette on her porch, and she points to the patch of grass in front of her block. “I’m going to start planting my herbs there,” she says, “I have a few vegetable seeds, too.”
She takes a drag and eyes the untamed patch like it’s a blank canvas.
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