My school was quite strange.

A lot of us were into punk and witchcraft. I’ve always been attracted to subcultures like that but, then again, I’m not sure that punk is a subculture.

My first band, the Toxic Cockroaches, was only a band for about a week. I was the guitarist but I didn’t have a guitar, my friend was the bassist but she didn’t have a bass. We did have a drummer but she couldn’t play the drums. She had a kit, though. It’s funny – when I started Florence And The Machine it was really just me with a drum. Some things never change.

I don’t know why so many musicians come from an art school background, as I did. I suppose if you have a creative sensibility you’re attracted to a place where you can create stuff. I always liked drawing and making dens, whether it was turning a whole room into something else or underneath a desk. I still carry a sketchpad.

The name Florence And The Machine started off as a private joke that got out of hand. I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn’t have a name, so I thought “Okay, I’ll be Florence Robot Is A Machine,” before realising that name was so long it’d drive me mad. I quite like the fact it’s not organic and pretty, but quite industrial – that juxtaposition of hard and soft.

I have really trippy dreams, especially on buses. I had a dream that Michael Jackson and my sister were bullying me in a school and I was calling my publicist to come and pick me up. I woke up with a real start from that one. All the anxiety dreams I have seem to take place in schools, for some reason.

Playing T in the Park recently was great, brilliant, really amazing. Some of the best gigs I’ve done have been in Glasgow, and the atmosphere at T in the Park was that same kind of really joyous buzz. I love a rowdy audience.

My worst characteristic is that I panic. I find it very easy to go into “Aaaah” terror town. My best? I’m quite sympathetic, I suppose. I’m empathetic.

My mother has had an amazing life. She’s an academic who’s written loads of books and worked really hard. She was given the chance to go and be a wild teenager but instead stayed put

and worked. Plus, she’s really calm and just gets on with things, whereas I sit and panic and self-loathe for a couple of hours. I

think my brain just does that to

me because it’s bored.

I’d love to go back to the 1920s – running around in the Jazz Age wearing a flapper dress. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a flapper, up on stage. I thank I’d have loved those days of decadence, extremes and aesthetics.

Given the choice, I’d want to be a wolf. I want to run in the night and howl at the moon with my pack.

I’m supporting Duran Duran at the moment, then I’m off to do more gigs, then just travel around the world for the rest of my life. I don’t know where sleep comes in because, right now, I’m just trying to find time to eat.

Florence And The Machine’s debut album Lungs, nominated last week for the Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize, is out now