For the musician Lindsay Schoolcraft, the imagery that opens the video for her latest single, ‘Lighthouse,’ is more than just artistic expression. A lone figure drifts through a silent, underwater world of wreckage, a scene that reflects a career Schoolcraft describes as a passage through stormy seas. The song, released June 25, is a declaration of independence for the Canadian artist, who is charting a new course after a seven-year tenure as the keyboardist and vocalist for the British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth, a tenure that ended, she now says, in a traumatic departure from an “unethical work environment.”

For the song, Schoolcraft assembled a team of trusted collaborators. She continued her work with co-writer Rocky Gray, the former drummer of Evanescence, and brought in the producer Justin deBlieck, known for his work with bands like Motionless in White, to give the track a modern edge.

Lindsay Schoolcraft: Building a World Away

Schoolcraft, a native of Oshawa, Ontario, had established a solo career long before her tenure with the British band. Her work demonstrates a consistent artistic evolution, beginning with her debut full-length album, ‘Martyr.’ The record, released on October 11, 2019, established her voice in the gothic rock genre and earned a nomination for a Juno Award, one of Canada’s premier music prizes.

A subsequent album, ‘Worlds Away,’ released on October 9, 2020, reimagined those compositions as neo-classical pieces, highlighting her formal training as a singer, pianist, and harpist at the Royal Conservatory of Music. This trajectory of artistic self-definition culminates in ‘Lighthouse,’ a single that functions as both a return to a heavier sound and a statement of personal survival.

Since her departure, Schoolcraft’s career has served as a case study in strategic independence. She has credited online business courses with informing her approach, which has involved diversifying her artistic endeavors. These include co-founding the chamber black metal project Antiqva, collaborating with a range of artists such as Motionless in White and Myrkur, and co-hosting a podcast. This network of projects is a direct response to the precarity she says she experienced as a component in a larger, more volatile machine.

Cradle of Filth: Echoes from a Broken Machine

In late August 2025, the abrupt, mid-tour departure of two members from the veteran British metal band Cradle of Filth—keyboardist Zoe Marie Federoff and guitarist Marek “Ashok” Šmerda—triggered a public dispute.

The pair alleged difficult working conditions, citing “a lot of work for relatively low pay” and high stress levels. The band’s frontman, Daniel Lloyd Davey, dismissed the claims as “unjust and unfounded” and publicly fired Šmerda. The controversy drew a powerful response from Schoolcraft, who broke a five-year silence to support the departing musicians.

“I am really, really proud of Zoë and Ashok for breaking the silence,” she stated on August 31, corroborating their claims of an “absolutely unethical work environment.” She revealed that her own 2020 departure was a traumatic experience requiring “legal representation and counselling” to fully detail, and that her silence had been a matter of “practical and survival” against the risk of being “blacklisted and completely financially ruined.”

Schoolcraft’s statement reframes the narrative of her 2020 departure, which was publicly attributed at the time to concerns for her “well-being and mental health.” Her later testimony suggests that such phrasing may function as an industry convention, a publicly acceptable explanation for more contentious labor disagreements.

The dynamic appears to serve as a crisis-management strategy within an industry characterized by precarious labor. For an established band that operates as a global brand, a public conflict over working conditions can be professionally damaging.

Conversely, for a departing member who may lack the resources for a protracted dispute, the “mental health” narrative provides a non-confrontational exit, mitigating the risk of being professionally blacklisted while allowing the band to avoid controversy. Schoolcraft’s experience, therefore, serves as a case study in the complex labor dynamics of the modern music business, where an artist’s personal story can illuminate a systemic industry issue.

With the help of regular collaborators, including the production designer Tamara Deverell and the cinematographer Dan Laustsen, del Toro has constructed a tangible nineteenth-century Europe, one that feels both historically grounded and mythically heightened. It is a world of crumbling castles, ornate interiors and gaslit dread, its visuals resembling what one critic called “hi-tech stained glass or illustrated plates in a Victorian tome.”

A Bridge to the Past: Sarah Jezebel Deva

Schoolcraft’s recent show of solidarity is part of a larger pattern of finding fellowship with other former members of her previous band. This was powerfully illustrated on October 14, 2022, with the release of her single ‘Remember to Breathe,’ a collaboration with Sarah Jezebel Deva.

Deva was a defining voice for Cradle of Filth for 14 years, and her departure in 2008 marked the end of an era for many of the band’s followers. The collaboration is therefore significant, bridging two distinct periods of the band’s history and uniting two of its most prominent female vocalists.

The song itself, with its evocative title, aligns with the themes of recovery and self-preservation that mark Schoolcraft’s independent work, creating a narrative of shared understanding between two artists who navigated similar professional environments. The collaboration serves as a symbol to the enduring careers these musicians have built on their own terms, maintaining a lasting international resonance.

This was recently highlighted by Deva’s performance in Bogotá, Colombia, where she appeared as a special guest during the Latin American tour of the Norwegian industrial metal band The Kovenant. Her inclusion in the high-profile tour highlights her continued relevance and appeal to a global audience, demonstrating that a career beyond a major band can be both sustainable and creatively vital.

A Solitary Note in the Great White North

Schoolcraft’s music developed within the unique context of Canadian metal, a scene shaped more by geography than by genre. The country’s vastness fostered isolation, leading not to the concentrated regional sounds of San Francisco’s thrash or Norway’s black metal, but to fiercely idiosyncratic bands like Voivod and Annihilator. A significant gothic metal scene, however, never truly coalesced in this landscape. For Schoolcraft, this absence provided a blank canvas.

Her independent business model, built on a broad range of international influences, is an extension of the self-reliance historically necessary for Canadian artists. That independence is bolstered by a national infrastructure that includes government arts grants, creating a framework that allows artists to pursue their work outside of strictly commercial demands and subsidizes their creative development.

Conclusion

A new heavy album is planned for 2026, which will be Schoolcraft’s first rock record created with the complete artistic and financial autonomy she has pursued. The journey is encapsulated in the lyrics of ‘Lighthouse,’ where a promise to “swim back to you” can be interpreted not as devotion to another, but as a recommitment to her own art and the audience that directly supports it.

Schoolcraft’s story has become a resonant one for a music industry in flux. Her career now serves as a blueprint for artistic survival, proposing a metric for success where independence is not just a creative choice, but a necessary shield in an often unforgiving industry.