Saya Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1995 (age 29–30) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Genres | Alternative pop |
| Labels | Dirty Hit |
| Formerly of | Quincy Bullen Band |
| Website | sayagray |
Saya Gray (born 1995) is a Canadian musician. She has four albums or EPs, starting with her debut in 2022.
Gray was born in 1995 [1] and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, [2] [3] growing up in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto. [4] Her mother is the founder of the Discovery Through the Arts music school in Toronto. [2] [5] She is of Japanese-Canadian descent. [3] [5] [4] Her mother's family moved from Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan to Canada when her mother was ten years old. [4] Her father is a Scottish-Canadian [6] jazz trumpet player who studied at the Berklee College of Music. [2] [5] Her brother, Lucian Gray, who plays the guitar, appears on her album 19 Masters. [5] She began playing the piano at a young age, [5] [4] [6] eventually deciding around the age of ten to play bass. [5]
Gray began playing music in a house band for a Jamaican Pentecostal church. [7] At the age of eighteen, Gray was a music teacher and a member of the Quincy Bullen Band. [8] After dropping out of high school in order to take night classes instead, she moved to London in the United Kingdom at the age of nineteen. [4] She worked as a touring bassist for over ten years prior to releasing music. [5] She previously played as a bassist in Canadian singer and songwriter Daniel Caesar's touring band. [2] [3] She has also been a musical director for American singer Willow Smith [2] and a bassist for English singer and songwriter Liam Payne. [5]
In 2019, Gray began releasing original music. [3] Her debut album, 19 Masters, was released on 2 June 2022. [3] [5] In 2023 and 2024, she released the dual extended plays QWERTY and QWERTY II. [4] [9] [10]
Her second album, Saya, was released on 21 February 2025. [2] The album was shortlisted for the 2025 Polaris Music Prize. [11]
Gray has lived in Toronto and the countries of Japan and the United Kingdom. [3] [4] She was living in Tokyo as of March 2024. [4]