Although born in Cardiff, Matthews was brought up in Swansea and Pembrokeshire.
It was during school holidays there that she first developed her interest in music, by picking up an acoustic guitar and playing Beatles songs and Welsh folk numbers.
After leaving school, she spent some time caring for children in Barcelona and studying psychiatric nursing, before returning to Wales. She met Mark Roberts in 1992 in Cardiff, and the fledgling Catatonia was born.
She sang lead vocals on the band's hits, including "You've Got A Lot To Answer For", "Mulder and Scully", "Dead From The Waist Down", and "Road Rage", and played guitar on the earlier material before second guitarist Owen Powell joined the band.
She performed a single with the band Space named The Ballad of Tom Jones, which tells the story of two lovers who want to kill each other, but then hear a Tom Jones song that defuses their homicidal feelings. Matthews also collaborated with Tom Jones himself to record a version of Frank Loesser's Baby, It's Cold Outside on Jones' album 'Reloaded'. She even came back to Cardiff and played in a number of pubs, including 'The Caerau'....in Caerau!
In September 2001 Cerys announced her departure from Catatonia after bouts of exhaustion and anxiety, and a spell in rehab due to problems brought on by excessive drinking and smoking.
The remaining members of the band continued their career together, under a different band name. After a well deserved rest, Matthews moved to Nashville in 2002, in search of a new ideas for an album.
It is here that she met Bucky Baxter, who she worked with to produce her debut solo album, Cockahoop, which was recorded in seven months and appeared in the UK in May 2003. Cerys still lives in Nashville with her husband Seth Riddle, whom she married in February 2003, and their two children, Glenys P earl Y-Felin and Johnny Tupelo Jones.
In December 2005, Cerys Matthews recorded a new version of the classic 60's hit "1-2-3" in Nashville, Tennessee. The Cardiff-based ad-agency JM Creative asked Cerys to sing the song for a series of television and radio commercials promoting the importance of numeracy. The campaign was commissioned by the Basic Skills Agency on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.
