Everyone’s hustling in the crowded marketplace of TikTok but social media fairytales do come true for a select few artists: just ask sea shanty star Nathan Evans, singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod, and now Fife-based dynamo NATI., who became an overnight sensation in her late twenties at a point when she was in danger of falling out of love with music.

‘During lockdown, you were either buying a hot tub or you were on TikTok,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have a garden so I went on TikTok and started doing Scottish traditional songs, then some modern stuff, some Motown. People took to it so well that I thought, “why don’t I play something that I wrote?” and I’ve been seeing where it went ever since.’

Where it went was to the ears of one of her favourite artists, Newton Faulkner, who duetted with her on TikTok, then invited NATI. to join him in an online concert and later in person on two tours. Having first found an audience virtually, she was then able to meet her fans in person, opening for the likes of Tide Lines and Simply Red, closing the River Stage at this year’s TRNSMT, bossing it in the US at the Dressed To Kilt event, and on her own headline tour.

‘There was no airs and graces with me,’ she says of her online appeal. ‘People maybe thought I was approachable and it didn’t really change when I met them in person; that chemistry and bond is still there.’ But with great visibility comes great responsibility and her original stage name Nati Dreddd (a childhood nickname derived from her birth name Natalie and her parents’ love of the Bob Marley song ‘Natty Dread’) was hanging heavily, and she recently decided to drop the Dreddd and rebrand.

‘There are two reasons,’ she says, ‘the main one being the culture connotations which it may have. It doesn’t matter the innocent, harmless place it came from or the fact that it’s spelled differently: when you say it out loud it sounds like a phrase from a culture that doesn’t belong to me and I would never want somebody of that culture to come to my shows and be misled (and even more so offended or upset), so in good faith I didn’t want to keep the name. Also it’s hard to spell and when you try and shout it on Alexa it cannae find me!’

Suitably streamlined, she is now preparing to release her debut EP under her new moniker. Older is a snapshot of her rebirth and growth as a musician over the last two years, bringing together a themed collection of her rootsy, catchy Scot-pop songwriting.

‘The whole story centres around ageing and everything you learn (good, bad, ugly, tragic and beautiful) about getting older,’ she says. Analysing the tracks on the EP, NATI. explains: ‘all the songs were written last year as I was approaching 30. “Older” is the birthday party, “Stay” is the break-up, “5 More Minutes” is the “fuck you” anthem, “Open Road” is starting again and “Ashes” is acceptance: what you see is what you get.’

Older is released on Friday 20 October; NATI. plays The Caves, Edinburgh, Sunday 10 December.