by Marisa Brown Born in 1980 to a New Zealander father and a Scottish mother, Lucie Silverman spent her childhood years between her parents' native countries as well as England (where she had been born). Always interested in music, she had started playing the piano by age five and had written her first song by age ten. Years later, Silverman dropped out of high school to work as a background singer for ex-Take That singer Gary Barlow, and in 2000 she signed to then-EMI imprint Chrysalis Records. Her debut single, "It's Too Late," failed to make a significant showing on the British charts, however, and Lucie (who was now going by the name Lucie Silvas) was dropped from the label before an album ever came out. She spent the next few years working as a songwriter, writing for such artists as Liberty X and Will Young, but ultimately decided that performing her own material was what she truly wanted to do. Accordingly, she began to work on getting herself another record deal. Mercury picked up the young singer in 2003 and released her debut full-length, Breathe In, the following year. The next few years were spent touring, specifically in the U.K. but also in the rest of Europe and even Asia. After a few delays, Silvas' second album, The Same Side, hit British shelves in 2007 (it had already been released in Holland in October 2006).