Bash Croft has been oscillating between stage and screen since he was eight. Before the age of 20, the Oxford native had already made his West End debut in Sam Mendes’s production of Oliver!, earned critical acclaim for his role in Trevor Nunn’s King John, and been cast in two juggernaut series: Game of Thrones (as a young Ned Stark) and Heartstopper. But his aims were always elsewhere. “My heroes were all musicians,” he remembers. “David Bowie. Freddie Mercury. George Michael. Elton John. I remember watching Freddie Mercury’s Live Aid performance and just seeing one person hold so many people in the palm of his hand and thinking, ‘I don’t know what that is, but that is what I want to do.’”
Croft, 24, has written songs since he was young, almost exclusively for himself. Aged 16, he plucked up the courage to perform in front of his school despite being badly bullied. “It was just before I left the school I was at, and there was a boy who I’ve been having a secret relationship with,” he says. “I’d written loads of songs about him, but no one knew they were about him.” Aside from these glimpses, songwriting remained a private pursuit. Then he went through his first big break-up, and everything cracked open. “I used to joke when I was in my first relationship that I would either be with that person forever, or I’d go and write an album about it,” he laughs.
