CMAT has admitted that she struggled to sleep and felt "ill" in the days prior to her live performance at Glastonbury's main stage.
The Irish singer whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, played live at the Pyramid Stage at the Worthy Farm event in June, which saw her perform tracks from her back catalogue, as well as tracks from her forthcoming studio album, Euro-Country.
The musician said: "It’s worth noting that the two days beforehand, I was acting like someone who was about to go into war".
"I was shaking with the fear. I couldn’t talk to anyone, I didn’t sleep, like I was ill", she continued. "I was so, so scared. I was so scared for the Pyramid Stage".
"I kind of just kept throwing my head in my hands, and like screaming and being like, 'Why did they let me do this?’.
"And then by the time I walked on stage, the feeling, the first thought that occurred to me was, ‘Oh my God, I’m so relieved that this is about to be over, because I don’t have to be scared of it anymore", she added. "And then, actually, weirdly, because I had had that thought, I was like, ‘Oh, I can just enjoy myself, because it’s about to be over and not in front of me anymore’".
"Because of that, I actually did enjoy myself, and we were really well rehearsed. And it just felt amazing. It was amazing".
"It was a weird thing walking out, though, because someone was like, ‘Oh, you should get about 20,000 people at that time’… and I walked out, and I’ve seen 20,000 people before, and I was like, I don’t know, I don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen this wall (of people). They just kept going".
Elsewhere, CMAT revealed that she had 10 minutes on her own following her performance, where she filmed an episode of CBeebies Bedtime Stories.
"When I stepped off the stage, I was a bit shocked, and I was a bit winded, because the weight of everything came down on me as I was stepping down, and I literally curled up in a ball behind the sofa in my dressing room and made my sister close the door and was like, ‘No one can look at me for five to 10 minutes", she said.
"And I just literally curled up in a ball and I didn’t talk to anyone for like 10 minutes".
As she concluded her set, the audience joined CMAT as she treated them to alive rendition of her track, Stay For Something, as well as chanting "Free Palestine" in a protest against the sustained Israeli strikes in Gaza.
