Kamila Thompson sits in a modest café just down the street from the Troubadour on Old Brompton Road, a venue she is playing tonight and where she has played countless times before.

Suddenly, while in mid-sentence, her attention is taken by a wheelchair-bound gentleman struggling to enter the premises.
“God, imagine being in a wheelchair,” she says thoughtfully, “it would be so horrible. Each time I bitch about something I should be like ‘urgh, it’s not that bad is it?’. I’ve completely forgotten what I was talking about. I have the attention span of a gnat.”

Before she was distracted, she was, inevitably, talking about the impact of her extraordinary family and friends on her infant career as a singer-songwriter. Her father is Richard Thompson, her mother is Linda Thompson (she was born just after the two had split up in notorious acrimony in the early eighties) and her brother is Teddy Thompson. She is friends and collaborates with the Wainwright siblings, Sean Lennon and plenty more. Yet to release her first album, her illustrious associations precede her. Not that you’d know it from chatting with this most unflappable and confident member of a folk-rock dynasty, but surely it’s a lot to live up to.

“No it’s great,” she says without hesitation. “I love my family and friends, if I was associated with someone I thought sucked then maybe it would be different.

“It’s not like being one of The Stones’ kids or something. My parents are very well respected but they’re very culty – it doesn’t come up that much. It’s quite the gauntlet to have thrown down, but at the same time I’m not trying to do what they did, and I don’t think I could.”

Of Thompson’s own music in a minute, but she has seeped her way into the consciousness of the capital’s music fans in the past year by popping up at high-profile concerts by her high-profile friends. From joining her brother on stage at Dingwalls to joining Martha Wainwright at the Royal Festival Hall, Rufus Wainwright at Kenwood House and a maelstrom of talent at the recent Rogues Gallery concert at the Barbican, not all 24-year-old musicians have such an existing fan base they can expose themselves to.

But the Thompsons and the Wainwrights have long been close, ever since Rufus and Teddy were set up as young friends in Los Angeles. Kamila Thompson, young among this company, hints at a kindred spirit in Martha, given the similar trajectory of their careers and supposedly more successful older brothers.

“You could probably say that,” she says. “Martha’s kicking royal arse nowadays, but it took her a little longer. I think there’s something about having an older sibling who’s out there and doing it that makes it almost embarrassing to step up and say ‘I do it too.’”

Perhaps it was for that reason that Thompson, during her late teens and early twenties, was not as hell-bent on a career in music as you might think – despite the fact she had been writing songs since she was 14. She managed to escape the family business – temporarily at least – by taking a graduate job in the TV industry (her step-father is the agent Steve Kenis).

“I was just tea bitch,” she says, “I was kind of a Junior Actors Agent. I hope I didn’t fuck up anyone’s life. I’d been noodling and playing for years but wasn’t ready, and I had to do something.”

She is fairly non-committal about her years in administrative hell, as she is about her schooling at Bedales, the ‘progressive’ Hampshire institution that is a “real rock stars’ kids school” and shaped the young minds of Lily Allen, Sophie Dahl and Johnny Flynn, among many others. Thompson doesn’t care though, speaking with little fondness for something that is a mere footnote to her current situation. “It’s just one of those slightly posh boarding schools,” she says dismissively, “I was only there for four years.”

Having sang on her mother’s 2002 album Fashionably Late and contributed her own quasi-feminist anthem ‘Nice Cars’ to Linda’s 2007 record Versatile Heart, it was in 2006 when her burgeoning solo career gathered momentum. Upon seeing her performing at the “Hammersmith something-or-other”, non-other than Will Oldham invited her to tour with him in New Zealand, beginning a musical kinship that continues today – Thompson will travel to LA to play with him in October.

“He saw me singing a song, then sent me an email asking if I wanted to come to New Zealand. I was like ‘I’ve no idea who you are, but ok’. So I met him at Auckland airport, after he’d sent me all his records and said ‘learn this’.
Isn’t Oldham something of a ‘kook’, to put it as nicely as possible?

“He is strange, but he’s lovely. And incredibly intelligent and so talented it’s an aphrodisiac. Yes he’s a little bit strange sometimes but he’s lovely.”

Thus certain wheels were set in motion that have led to the completion of her debut album, Love Lies, which was recorded in New York with all her famous friends and produced by Martha Wainwright’s husband, Brad Albetta. It was supposed to be out earlier this year, but due to a potential deal offer being “essentially retracted” next year is now more likely.

Thompson describes her songs as “slightly rocky, odd pop” and scoffs at any suggestion she is a folk singer.
Unfortunately, unless you’ve seen her live or visit her website her songs haven’t really seen the light of day yet, though today she talks of a potential EP release before the end of the year.

While clearly sounding like an artist’s ‘first songs’ with all the heart-on-the-sleeve rawness that goes with that (think Martha Wainwright’s first record), her songs manage to convey lyrical maturity and the distinctive melodic touch that characterises her brother, her father and perhaps the Wainwrights. Her voice, too, is the same low drawly tone as Teddy and Richard. Best is when, on songs like the up-tempo ‘Stormy’, she uses electric guitars and backing vocals to create an eerie, almost threatening atmosphere. So no, she’s not a folk singer at all, as she says.

The subject matter, on the other hand, is pretty traditional.

“The songs are all about love, I guess” she says, “I find it hard to write about anything else. It’s my prevailing theme, just generally in life, even though I’m not entirely sure I believe in it. Maybe that’s why I write about it so much. I think it might be a big old pile of rubbish.”

Possibly, but this youngest Thompson looks set to have plenty of fun finding out.