WATCH: Katie Gregson-MacLeod performs her song Chicago for the Scotsman Sessions

“I've fallen in love, maybe more than once,” she reveals. “I've passed my driving test, moved to Glasgow, written hundreds of songs, made new friends, lost some, toured around the UK, Ireland and Europe, and gone from 21 to 25 - now that’s a jump.”

She's also about to release her long-awaited debut album, Albatross, although she feels it's arrived at exactly the right time in her life and career. “Whatever iteration of my album I could've made before now would not be all that Albatross is for me,” she says.

“I'm so proud of it, which isn’t something I've really felt before as an artist. I’ve felt great satisfaction personally from writing, from the cathartic emotional process of it, from playing live and connecting with people. But I genuinely think this is the first time that I’m just dead chuffed with myself for what I’ve made.”

Recorded over two weeks, Albatross is essentially a live-in-the-studio album suffused with all the raw introspection fans have come to expect from Gregson-MacLeod.

As she explains, “Very little rehearsing, planning and dissecting went into this record once we were in the studio. That means these songs were served with a real intentionality. It also means I’ve nowhere to hide, which is what I wanted.”

A staple of her live set over the last few years, Chicago is the Albatross song she's chosen to perform, beautifully, for the Scotsman Sessions.

“I’ve always felt it to be one of the pillars of this record’s songwriting, thematically and stylistically,” she says. “Being non-autobiographical, its narrator is distinctively optimistic and confident against the record’s more introspective backdrop. I like this as a representation for the record, as it hits upon its central pursuit of purpose and connection, but does so in a way that feels suitably naive and playful.”

Gregson-MacLeod's talent is self-evident, and it seems likely that Albatross will make more people sit up and take notice.

“I feel like the luckiest person alive for being able to do this full-time,” she says, “for having people listening at all, telling me what my music has done for them. That’s the surreal stuff. I've definitely taken a while to get to a place where I’m able to totally connect with it all, as I feel I was plunged into it pretty fast and maybe wasn’t well-equipped to deal with all that the industry had to offer.”

She now has time to take stock of how far she's come.

“I had one of those moments after making this album. I just sat there realising that the experience I had was exactly the one I’d always been seeking. The feeling that came with that was very special, and I think will propel me onwards for a long time.”

Albatross is released on 6 November via Last Recordings on Earth, see www.katie-gregson-macleod.com

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