Music has been in Nina Lim’s life ever since she picked up a violin as a child. Going from the depths of classical academia into the throes of touring with Black Country, New Road for a few years, it certainly doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon. But with her latest endeavour as Ninush, this is her first foray into songwriting and leading a project, putting a lifetime of performing and studying into something of her own creation. And it all came about simply to see if she could.

Of course, having been a student of music for most of her life meant Nina was primed to tackle this self-imposed challenge. Having spent her childhood learning her chosen instrument under her violinist godparents, she was able to go deep into her craft, which eventually led to her joining the National Youth Orchestra when she was a bit older. But this came at an eventual cost. Finding a severe performance anxiety taking hold after undertaking a degree, this was her life up until 2020 when she decided to do a master’s. However, when BCNR required a replacement for Georgia Ellery, she found a whole new world opening up.

“It was just supposed to be this one-year thing, I was going to take a year out of uni and go on tour with Black Country, New Road,” she remembers. “I was uhhmming and ahhing about it, because it was kind of like, if I do it, it might completely sabotage my classical career. And then one year turned into three years of touring with those guys.”

Fully embarking upon her solo ideas came about when her tenure with BCNR ended in 2023. “I was having a bit of a meltdown about what I was going to do in my life,” she admits. “I had to start my life from scratch.” As she was starting up a career as a freelance violinist, playing with the likes of Jockstrap and Geordie Greep, as well as arranging strings for Holly Humberstone and Little Simz, she found this new avenue calling to her. “Starting the project suddenly gave me a purpose and gave me a thing to think about all the time.”

“It wasn’t so much an itch, like I had to be an artist, but I just wanted to see if I was capable of writing a song,” she suggests. It was actually her time with BCNR that instigated this exploration, particularly during the fractious time in 2021 when ex-frontman Isaac Wood left. Here she saw how the rest of the band came together and stepped up into roles that weren’t previously theirs. “[Songwriting] was still a relatively new thing for them, and it gave me the confidence to be like, ‘Oh, my friends are really fearless, and they feel like they can just do it’,” she recalls. “‘Maybe I can give it a go?’”