because she misses her native Scotland, rock singer Shirley Manson is threatening to give up her international music career.

Despair had driven her to mutilate herself with a knife, she said on the website of her band, Garbage.

The Edinburgh-born redhead has been living the high life in America for six years after becoming the band's lead singer.

She said she misses simple things like the chance to walk through her home city's cobbled streets eating a bag of fish and chips, and seeing her favourite football team on a Saturday.

She also admits that homesickness and the difficulty of being the only female in the four-person group prompted her to mutilate herself with a knife.

In a revealing interview on the band's official Internet site, the singer reveals that months of being stuck in an American recording studio working on the band's third album has taken its toll.

Manson, 33, said: ''I want to go home. I have totally had enough. I want my f---ing life back.

''I want to go back home to Scotland and hang out in the city with my friends and catch a bus and eat some fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and hear some Scottish accents and watch the sea roll up against my garden wall and take a walk upon the cobblestones and watch Celtic play football on a Saturday afternoon (even if they lose).''

The former Broughton High School pupil has previously spoken of how much she misses her husband and the difficulties of maintaining a transatlantic marriage.

Manson married Eddie Farrell, an artist, four years ago but has continued to live in America at the band's base in Madison, Wisconsin, while her husband, who shuns the media spotlight, stays in Scotland.

In her web diary, she said: ''I want to hear my husband laugh out loud at something funny on the telly, and watch my mum boil her Christmas pudding six weeks in advance, and get plastered on whisky, and see Edinburgh Castle all covered in snow . . .''

The former keyboard player in the band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie also berates the music business as having nothing to do with the love of the art.

''It's solely about the egos of men who only really care about power and dollar signs. It gets to the point where you begin to stop wanting to make music altogether in an attempt to loosen the noose around your own neck,'' she added.

Earlier this year the star confessed to having resorted to self-mutilation by cutting herself with a knife in her youth.

The only signs of her habit are small scars on her legs, but she has admitted she still feels an urge to cut herself again.

When she was in the grip of the compulsion, she hid her bloody scars by wearing trousers and boots, but kept a penknife in her Doc Martens footwear.

By the time Garbage was formed in 1994 she believed she had conquered the problem - but then had a relapse a little over two years ago during a European tour.

During that tour she had again become homesick and said she was tired of listening to the men in the band constantly talking about beautiful women and ''groupies''.

She said it was one show, where there was a stage parade of topless 16-year-old girls, that had pushed her over the edge.

Manson said that she felt she was not thin enough and that cutting herself ''started to make sense again''.

Manson brought the band to Princes Street Gardens for an emotional concert at the opening of the Scottish Parliament.