Occasionally, just occasionally, you listen to an album and can wholly appreciate the emotional journey the artist has endured in creating it. ‘Womb Room’, the heart-rending debut from 31-year-old Ailsa Tully, is a case in point.
The record – intimate, delicate and intensely introspective – is, in so many ways, a dedication to Ailsa’s father, Colin Tully, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 66. Colin was a highly accomplished musician himself – a composer, saxophonist, flautist and pianist, who played and recorded with folk legend (and fellow Glaswegian) John Martyn. Colin also wrote the music for cult 1980 film Gregory’s Girl and won the Eurovision Song Contest with Johnny Logan’s What’s Another Year? He was also, crucially, musical mentor to his daughter from a very early age.
Ailsa: “He was doing music all his life. So when I was born, I don’t know if he did it intentionally, but he was a big influence on me learning to play. We just played together loads. He played piano and I played cello. I did everything by ear.”
Their bond was tight and the emotional strain of her father’s passing has been enormous. The wounds of Ailsa’s grieving process are strewn across her debut album, Womb Room. Its opening track, the instrumental Hendre, is named after the family home in Monmouthshire. The last track, the ever-so-poignant He’s Leaving, was a song Colin had been working on before he died. Ailsa found the recording and added her cello parts in the studio.
Inbetween, the album glides serenely through a refined collection of ambient, bass-led pieces – at times in reverie, at other times in mourning. The hazy-noir of bands like Cigarettes After Sex or Beach House comes to mind, with luminous, cavernous bass lines taking a prominent role.
Ailsa: “I ended up playing bass much later in my life. At Goldsmiths, it was really annoying lugging my cello around. I was doing all these pub gigs that were a bit crap and my cello is like 300 years old. So it was quite stressful turning up with this antique and getting it bashed around. I got an electric cello but that was the most disgusting sound I’ve ever heard in my life. It was so horrible. When you bow it, there’s no resonance. It’s just such a horrible, grating noise. So I just tuned the bass to cello tuning and now I play like that. It’s my very weird way into it. I’ve always enjoyed using an instrument wrongly.”
By her won admission, Ailsa held on to the album for a very long time, but its release at the start of 2026 “felt right – it’s been positive rather than sad.”
Ailsa’s emotional journey has been significantly aided by a woman she describes as part-teacher, part-therapist and part-spiritual guide.
Ailsa: “Very lovingly, I call it a cult. It’s a kind of therapy where you do inner work. You go back into memories that may have been traumatising or triggering and try to come to a resolution. It has transformed things for me.”
Her domestic life has been through numerous transitions over the last few years too. As a child, she grew up in Bristol, moved to Wales aged seven, then went to study at Goldsmiths in her late teens and spent the next 10 years in London. But when her father died, it sparked an urge to find a sense of home and belonging. Ailsa and her partner, Jovis Lane, left Hackney, where they were living with his family, to return to Wales.
Ailsa: “There was a really good music scene in Cardiff, which I’d been involved with for ages. The funding in Wales is much better than in England. We moved into my grandma’s house, who had passed away a couple of years before. So we were suddenly in this really huge vicarage, about an hour from Cardiff, with acres of land.”
After six months, they moved again, to a commune in St. Werburghs, Bristol. Six months after that, they were back in London, this time living in a warehouse in Tottenham, before moving in with friends and family.”
Ailsa: “I have been nomadic but I’ve really not wanted to be. I am someone who loves being settled. I was trying to figure out where to escape to. But now we’ve actually left London, I realise you need another reason. You always think you can just move and you’ll make it work but we really needed something to anchor us. And work can be quite helpful in that way.”
Ailsa had a university friend from Hebden Bridge and knew the town well, so when her partner decided to do a PhD in Manchester, a move to HX7 seemed like a natural choice.
Ailsa: “I love it here. I think finding an alternative pocket in the countryside was really important to me. It’s nice to find this little magic place.”
For now, she is proud resident of Hebden Bridge. For how long, who knows? Ailsa comes across as someone who observes intently with curiosity, who challenges preconceptions about the world at large and who questions everything, especially herself. She is very aware. She is deeply philosophical. She is searching for answers.
Ailsa: “You can look with your head, or you can look with your body, and I feel like, if you look with your head, you’ll never find what you need. But if you kind of feel into what’s right and let that feeling lead you… you just get a completely different perspective. You can find peace with your life choices or whatever’s happened to you. The inner work I do, the therapy, it definitely helps me to get to a different level of understanding and, maybe,” she smiles, “stop worrying about the question.”
You can’t help but feel that Womb Room, despite being 10 years in the making, is also a snapshot of where Ailsa finds herself at this point in her life. And while she’s discovered a sense of peace, perhaps the search continues and certain questions remain. If so, her dad Colin would no doubt be proud of the answers she’s come up with so far.
Follow Ailsa Tully on Instagram for news of live dates and future releases.
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