As a child in her Liverpool homestead, Sophie Morgan stumbled upon a mystical world. Peering in, she'd seemingly discovered another side of life, one where reality blended with mysterious, noir-gothic fiction, and at once, she felt at home.

It was from this place, filled not with Cheshire Cats but doomed lovers, that she emerged as Luvcat. Starring in her own Wonderland fantasy, soundtracked by glam-rock-tinged, sultry goth-pop, these were the first paw prints on a path that's now fulfilling all of her wishes. And it seems this glamorous transformation was always written for Sophie.

"As a child, I've just always had one foot in the real world and one foot… God knows where else," she laughs. "I think reading Alice in Wonderland as a very young child changed the whole trajectory of my life and my brain."

It was the reality-embracing aspect of Alice's adventures that struck young Luvcat most of all. "I love that at the beginning, where she's at the garden party, and all of the people from normal, mundane life are all there, and then when she goes down the rabbit hole, they're all characters in this very strange universe… the Mad Hatter was just a guest at this garden party. And I feel like that is how I see my music." This led to her transforming the everyday people we all encounter into fantastical cinematic creations.

"It goes in my brain, and it does this strange thing," she says, gesturing to her forehead, "and then they come out as this slightly warped character." Struggling to put a finger on what that unsaid transformer in her mind is, she lands upon the easiest answer: "I just think it's being curious and having an overactive imagination, wanting to go beyond that veil."

Putting her keen eye to a yarn to spin, she began bringing tales back from her own Wonderland. The perfume-scented Black Forest, a place where her followers can wander and feel enveloped, like Alice's, is comprised of real people and real stories. "There's obviously embellishment in some places, I haven't poisoned my husband to sing about it in one of the murder ballads," she cackles. "But I always want to push it, let it start from a real emotion. We all know what an unhinged, passionate, obsessive, addictive love feels like. Like, how far can we go?"

Luvcat's story is one of intrigue. Well-documented at this point, the smattering of legend, such as her being born on a Parisian tugboat moored on the River Seine, or her tryst with a circus ringmaster, since appearing in 2023, it's given Luvcat an enchanting aura that radiates from her rock'n'roll tales and the glimpses posted on her socials.

Her first-ever full-length project, 'Vicious Delicious', is the collection of all these lives led after peering through the rabbit hole and bringing back only the juiciest, most sensual, darkly despairing and downright theatrical bits that had been lurking for years. Like little bats hanging down, Luvcat's influences fluttered around her, climbing higher and higher into her subconscious before breaking out into the daylight.

"It feels quite strange, to be honest," she says of this emergence. "I feel like little parts of myself, especially from childhood and my influences growing up, are slowly being pulled out of me, and I've felt that freedom. Those little parts of me are all able to grow wings and come together."

All of this culminates in 'Vicious Delicious'. Written with no fat to trim, the 13, the only number it could've been, to be honest, tracks that make it up were all that was penned, including the breadcrumb trail of singles she's been releasing since last year. "We didn't have the time or money… we didn't have an abundance of everything. We had to make those calls and go wholehearted," she says. The Halloween release date was another mystical moment of happenstance. "As I looked ahead on the calendar and was like, 'Oh no, it's a Friday, we need to get our asses in the studio right now and get this album ready'," she recalls.

Her journey - from peering into the unknown to becoming her own veritable Mad Hatter, leading the tea party whichever direction she sees fit - was always on the cards. A folk-singing, theatrical-My Chem-loving kid (while suppressing the latter in search of becoming the former), it's all unveiled itself as necessary, with the succinct realisation she has now that, "It was all about the show," she says. "I tried to do it, and people embraced it, and it feels really sweet. I feel like the most true version of me now, without sounding really corny… that was so corny! Oh my God, I sound American," she says while hiding behind her hands.

But Luvcat's world isn't just heard, it's seen. While the storytelling in the tunes gives her Wonderland its bones, the flesh comes out in beautifully crafted music videos. It's something that's been in her since she was a small child. "I wrote a Victorian murder mystery when I was, like, 12, and made all my neighbours dress up as Victorians with parasols, and we were filming it on my estate. All the neighbours must have thought, 'What is this kid up to?'" she laughs.

After receiving a small camera and using Windows Movie Maker, young Luvcat would toil away making her own videos purely for the love of it. "I didn't care if anyone saw it. It wasn't going online. I'd do a little premiere for the mums with popcorn," she smiles again. "I was making music videos when they had 20 views, and I still had the same time, care and effort that they do now when people actually give a shit."

Being able to traverse reality and turn it into something tangible does indeed take grit. Graft has been a big part of Luvcat's journey. With a history of busking, immersing herself in the mardy and serious folk scene around Liverpool, while she's not from musical stock, she does come from a driven and determined family, which has helped her vision come to life. "I never wanted to work for anyone else," she says with a defiant shrug. Admitting she never worked well with authority, it makes sense she'd find her feet in a universe of her own creation. Wanting to carve her own path, she left school at 16. "My dad said if you're a musician, you'll never go hungry, so it doesn't matter," she says.

Having found the ball of success rolling, and after a year playing an incredible number of festivals and touring, all on the back of her fabulously dark view of reality, the gut feeling that's served her well so far is here to stay. "I have this witchy feeling. I don't know what the word is to describe it," she ponders. "Maybe it's just gut instinct. And sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't, but I've learned to just listen, and so far it's working, okay?" she smiles.

In fact, having celebrated the anniversary of standout track 'He's My Man', with a suitably haunting re-record featuring Manc poet John Cooper Clarke, and a matching update to its music video, it was originally a B-side that soon became a focal introduction to the world Luvcat wanted to lure all into. "Every meeting I'd ever had, no one had picked up on that song. But for me, it always had this witchiness," she remembers. "When I first wrote it, I lay in a park in London, in this late September, sticky heat, and I fell asleep with it looping over and over again, and I was like, I think I'm onto something here."

Her first real foray into bringing that darkness to life, and exorcising that side she'd discovered, she nods now: "I always had this desire to delight and disturb, and that was the first song that did both that I'd written." Putting it straight in her live set, a video of the sultry song blew up, and that was that. "Being able to be green-lit into this world was amazing. Making an album where I could, about three-quarters of the way in, take a darker turn and never worry about a single," she recalls, before sighing, smiling: "But I think we live in a different world now."

What does Luvcat think it is that's caught the imaginations of an incredibly feverish, leopard-print-clad, red-lippy contingent? "It's for the goths, the romantic goths, maybe that's what it is?" she puzzles. "I feel like a lot of my fans love the same things as me, and we all grew up in that era of whimsical gothic romance. And people love storytelling; that never dies. I'm from Liverpool, we've all got Irish blood, it all probably stems from that, that we love to spin a tale. And I think the world will always love a good story."

It's partly why she's leaned so far into the mythos and magic that she stumbled upon in her adventure. When you're an artist and music scribblers are asking you God knows what about yourself, over and over and over, it gets a bit samey. As she explains: "It's from being a struggling musician for so many years and just getting bored of myself. I didn't want to say, 'Oh, I started playing piano when I was six, and then I started writing poems…' I just thought, no one cares. I don't care, and it's me!" she exclaims. "Let's try and entertain people with something a little bit; let's just have a bit of escapism for a change."

"I love the days of people having fun with it and telling a few white lies, it's way more fun that way. I love music that's escapism, music that transports you, music that allows you to have your own interpretation and doesn't interfere with that too much," she continues. "As an artist, I would love to invite people in, and then be able to kick them back out if I need to. I think keeping a little bit of intrigue and mystery is always where I've tried to go, so that I'm entertained."

With this ethos in mind, she's aware that it offers her the advantage of taking a step back if it all gets too much. "I don't want to be a public figure or a celebrity or anything like that, I want to be a storyteller," she says. "I want to protect that so people can just listen to the stories and not be too bothered about what I'm eating for breakfast."

Having excavated and found a new homestead in her Wonderland, the soil is rich, and she's one with the space. "It's totally a part of me, it's not an alter ego or a character. It's my nickname, and I'll never stop writing, I'll never not want to steal a secret little moment at the piano and talk to it for hours," she muses wistfully. "I'm always going to do that, and I imagine it'll take on different forms, that's always dictated to me by who I'm hanging out with, where I am," she ends.

And like that, amongst a floating mirage of iconography in an endless freefall, she disappears with the astute observation one expects from gleefully peering into the rabbit hole: "I don't think it'll ever end."