Miriam Stockley was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She began singing at the age of 11 when she formed a duo with her sister Avryl. Shortly after this she was asked by a local building society to perform a short piece of music for a commercial. This started her singing career and at the age of 18 she moved to London. Since moving to the UK she has performed mainly backing vocals with many well known music artists. However, she received greater recognition in 1995 when she became part of Karl Jenkins' Adiemus project. Jenkins(formerly a member of the jazz band Soft Machine) was recording a piece of music for an airline commercial and he hired Miriam Stockley to perform the lead vocals. She has performed on all of the Adiemus albums since then. In 1999, she released her first solo album which was simply titled "Miriam".