“I have pretty much played guitar all my life and sung,” she said. “But probably in the last few years I have been songwriting and playing on a more intense level.”

In fact, the Wickham-based talent said it was the songwriting process that pulled her out of a bleak place. 

“I went through a pretty bad stretch in my life, I had some traumatic circumstances,” Dorahy said. 

“I was a bit of a recluse. I came out of it about 18 months ago.

“I attribute music to coming out of it 100 per cent. My go to was my guitar, I would sit and just play.

“I just started to write songs, I never realised I had songwriting in me … but it just started to pour out of me.

“It’s been a big journey for me, an amazing journey. Music has opened up my world.”  

Dorahy had always played guitar, but playing her own songs in public initially left her feeling “vulnerable and exposed”.

“I wasn’t raised to talk about my feelings,” she said. “For me it was very exposing. Just performing in front of friends made me feel nervous and sick.” 

But it is something she has pushed through discovering it is a “powerful thing to be that raw.” 

Eventually she took a batch of her orginal tunes into the studio and Stolen was the result. The five track debut was produced by Trent Crawford and recorded and mixed by Shane Nicolson at his Soundhole recording studio. 

Dorahy is inspired by the likes of Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and Missy Higgins. The EP is laden with mandolin and banjo.

This month she launched the video-clip for the single The One.

“It’s a reflective of basically my story from growing up as a young girl and looking back,” she said.

“The song describes the story of my life with my best friend … like a sister we just did everything together. 

“She protected me, I protected her. We looked out for each other and we had each other’s backs … we were soul mates and sisters.” 

However, the girls became women and eventually grew apart. 

“You just don’t think something like that will end, that the world will change,” she said.

“The song is about that one person, that one love that you think is going to be there forever, but life changes. It’s about loss.”

Stolen is available for digital download from iTunes. It will be launched at Peppertown Cafe on August 20 at 6pm. Entry is free.