Saint Sister

Morgana MacIntyre (Belfast) and Gemma Doherty (Derry) first met at Trinity College, Dublin in 2014. Both had graduated from the same college that summer and stayed in the city to pursue music; MacIntyre was working in a bookshop and Doherty was teaching harp and piano. They had known of each other, through mutual friends, but not well. Over the years, they watched each other play from afar, once competing against each other in a battle of the bands, and later singing different Gorillaz songs on the same night with their college orchestra.

Gemma studied music composition; a multi-instrumentalist, she had aspirations of becoming a film composer. Exposed to a mix of classical and traditional music as a young child, and later playing in Irish folk bands, she found herself becoming disillusioned with performing whilst studying composition.

Towards the end of college she was drawn back to her first instrument, the harp, and rekindled a love for it through her experimentation with effects and electronics. Inspired by composers like Steve Reich, she began to create self-contained soundscapes with the harp at the centre.

By contrast, MacIntyre has always been a songwriter. As a child she developed an obsession with lyrics, spending her formative years stopping and starting her cassette player in order to transcribe the words to her favourite songs. Absorbing the prophetic words of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, she began writing herself, cutting her teeth on Belfast’s open mic circuit.

In college, she released music under her own name and started to garner early recognition. Praise from Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody & Joan Armatrading established her as one to watch, but she soon became frustrated by the limitations of working alone and went in search of a collaborator.

Chatting over coffee it quickly became apparent that they were hoping to build something similar.

Between Morgan’s lyrics and Gemma’s soundscapes, their voices met right in the middle. Having both moved to Dublin at the same time, to find the same thing, their shared experience cemented their friendship and in 2018 their debut album ‘ Shape of Silence’ was met with critical acclaim and was nominated for the Choice Music Prize.

Acapella is definitely one of their main and distinct sounds which was in evidence when they performed their version of Dreams by the Cranberries at the funeral of the murdered journalist Lyra McKee in Derry in 2019, which they later recorded for Safe Ireland to highlight the rising prevalence of domestic abuse during lockdown.

In November of this year they won best album at the NI Music Prize Awards.

In 2020 a collective of Irish female artists, including Saint Sister, came together to raise desperately needed support for Safe Ireland, helping women and children living in crisis. This is a cover of “Dreams” by The Cranberries.