Orla Gartland on making a living from music: 'From where I’m stood, the major labels make no sense'

Drumcondra-born, London-based Orla Gartland started posting songs to YouTube from her yellow-walled bedroom in Dublin in 2009, and has continued charting her own path in the music industry 

Orla Gartland: out on the tiles. Pictures: Emily Quinn at The Workman's Club, Dublin

Fall in love and try not to lose yourself in the process. It’s this experience that 29-year-old Orla Gartland grapples with and captures magnanimously in her sophomore album Everybody Needs a Hero. 

As a piece of work, it is a metamorphosis — an album that ebbs and flows with feeling, twists and turns through the ups and downs and altogether interconnected nature of a long-term relationship. And through which she ultimately emerges self-assured.