Cath Carroll, was born Catherine Rycroft August 25, 1960 in Avon, England and spent most of her childhood in Manchester where she and Liz Naylor were, according to legend, granted the very first memberships to Factory Records club, The Haçienda. She re-named herself Carroll after she and Naylor were pulled out of their seats to be reprimanded by then The Fall manager Kay Carroll "for being purveyors of cheap shots and bad vibes," and wrote for NME as Myrna Minkoff a name taken from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces written in 1966, and published in 1980 eleven years after the suicide of it's writer John Kennedy Toole.

In 1984 Carroll was writing for NME and also fronted the band Miaow, that Unrest would later cover on A Factory Record (TB 63/Sub Pop 103). The groups first single Belle Vue (Venus Records) attracted the attentions of Factory Records, Tony Wlison, who released the bands next two singles. They also appeared on NME's C86 cassette before dissolving sometime before 1988.

Carroll signed the first contract with Factory Records in June of 1988 Carroll began work on her solo album (and also signed Factory Records first contract in September 1988, rumoured to be an 8-LP deal!) and was given an advance to record. She spent the next year recording in Sheffield, Sao Paolo, London and Chicago.

In late 1989, Carroll relocated to Chicago to be with her future husband Santiago Durango, followed by rumours that she had taken "all of Factory's advance money and Tony Wilson's pension fund."

Finally in 1991, England Made Me (FAC 210) was released, it's title taken from the Graham Greene novel of the same name. In November 1992, after the collapse of Factory, Carroll's album (which was the most expensive album released on Factory - unconfirmed) was cited amongst the reasons for the ill-run company's demise.

Without the support of a label, and dissapointing sales, Carroll appeared on a 1993 release by The Hit Parade but otherwise seemed to disappear.

In 1993, this changed when Mark Robinson's band Unrest released the album Perfect Teeth (TB 119), featuring on the cover a photo from a Robert Mapplethorpe's photo shoot done in 1991 for England Made Me and her cat tattoo illustrating the inside. The album was loaded with references to Carroll mentioning her ex-husband (ex-Big Black bassisst Santiago Durango), "FAC 179" (the catalogue number for Miaow's When It All Comes Down single), Liz Naylor (who created thefanzine City Life and was in the band Gay Animals with Carroll), Myrna Minkoff (Carroll's pseudonym while writing at NME) and scatterings of lyrics throughout the album. With the release of the album and the lead single, Cath Carroll (TB 105), suddenly Cath Carroll was launched to cult figure status, albeit on a small scale.

While touring with Unrest, Mark Robinson invited Carroll to open a Chicago date; a little wary of the attention she was getting, she declined. Eventually Robinson convinced her to meet and eventually to release a single (to be followed up by a second single and ful length) for Teenbeat. Relaunching her career stateside Carroll has since moved on to record for LTM Records.

In May of 1994, Teenbeat released the single, My Cold Heart (TB 137) and in October 11th 1994, Cath Carroll performed at The Bottom of the Hill in San Fransisco, CA as part of Teenbeat's Circus Tour.

Carroll now lives in Chicago, with her husband and bandmate Kerry Kelekovich, and has published a book on Tom Waits and also writes for Time Out New York. She is currently working on a book detailing the making of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (Vinyl Frontier/Unanimous Publishing) and is writing " a semi-memoir novel based on how Liz and I experienced punk rock in Manchester as 19th century males."

She was sadly written out of the Factory Record's movie, 24 Hour Party People.