Damien Leith was crowned the 2006 winner of the TV talent show 'Australian Idol'. With brilliant performances throughout the TV series he was voted the most popular by Australian audiences and his first single released after the win went straight to Number 1 on the charts.

Damien Leith was crowned the 2006 winner of the TV talent show 'Australian Idol'. With brilliant performances throughout the TV series he was voted the most popular by Australian audiences and his first single released after the win went straight to Number 1 on the charts. It was a beautiful, soaring ballad called 'Night of My Life' and was accompanied by a CD/DVD called 'The Winner's Journey', featuring all his Idol performances and two original songs. It too went to Number 1.

But Damien had been singing and performing for most of his life, well before his Australian Idol success. Born in Dublin, Ireland, January 18, 1976 he was from a musical family that spent time travelling and living in both Botswana and Libya as part of his fathers work as an engineer. Still, Damien says that there was always the guitar brought out at home to sing favourite Irish songs no matter where they were based. As a teenager Damien led a short-lived heavy metal band but it was with his siblings, sister Aine and brothers Paul and Darren, that he had his first chart hit. Under the name 'Leaf' one of their songs made it into the Irish Top 100. The group were then offered a recording contract in New York where they worked under the name 'Releaf', though chart success eluded them in the USA. The group broke up after that and went on to pursue various careers.

Damien met his Australian wife Eileen when she travelled on holiday to Ireland. They set off travelling together and eventually settled back in Sydney, Australia. Before auditioning for Australian Idol, Damien was working as a chemist, utilizing the Bachelor of Science degree he earned from University College, Dublin.

On winning Idol on November 26, 2006 there was some controversy due to the fact that Damien was not an Australian citizen. With his first son born here in 2005, Damien had already applied to become a citizen. On winning Idol, he says the Australian Immigration department contacted him and helped to fast track his application, resulting in Damien becoming an Australian citizen on January 25, 2007, taking the pledge from Prime Minister John Howard in a nationally televised broadcast on Network Ten.

Signed to Sony Music, Damien to date released five studio albums. His second album, titled 'Where We Land', came out in August 2007 and with it, Damien became the first Idol winner to have two consecutive Number 1 albums. Just under a year later Damien released 'Catch The Wind: Songs of A Generation'. It contained his interpretation of classic folk songs like 'Catch The Wind', 'Father and Son', 'Guitar Man', 'Sunshine on my Shoulder' and many others from songwriters that had influenced him over the years.

His third studio album, 'Remember June', again made the Top 30, and then last year he paid tribute to Roy Orbison with the album 'Roy'. With the blessing of Roy's widow Barbara Orbison, who had first seen Damien perform Roy's hit song 'Crying' on Australian Idol, he showed his extensive vocal range to perfection doing fabulous versions of classic Orbison songs like 'Only the Lonely', 'Pretty Woman', 'Working for The Man' many others. The Roy tribute CD made No.2 on the Australian charts.

Barbara Orbison was instrumental in helping organize the recording, she co-produced the CD and helped organize players and contributors, many of whom had worked with Roy over the years. She was a very active part of the album promotion too. Sadly, Barbara Orbison passed away in December 2011 less than six months after its release. Damien has told of the shock of hearing of her death, saying that she was quite a private woman and had told very few people of her illness.

Damien is not just a singer & songwriter, in early 2007 he signed a book deal with Harper Collins and has released 2 novels with a third currently in the pipeline. With the current release of his new CD 'Now & Then', Damien has again shown his love of the work of Roy Orbison by covering some more of his songs and those of Roy's bandmates in The Travelling Wilburys; George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. 'Now & Then' also contains some of Damien's original material. The first single is a track called 'Beautiful' which he co-wrote with another Australian songwriter Alex Lloyd. The song has also been picked up by the cosmetic company Estee Lauder to be used over the next two years in the promotional campaign for its best-selling perfume 'Beautiful'.

Now a true-blue Aussie with his roots firmly in this country; his three children Jarvis, Jagger and Kikki were all born here, Damien Leith has become an integral and stellar part of the Australian music scene.