Camille Poliquin is a Canadian musician, songwriter and singer. She is known as part of the electro-pop duo Milk & Bone and her musical solo project where she goes by the name Kroy.
Early life
Growing up in a household where music was given an important role Camille received musical education during her early studies.[1] At 12 years old she was cast as Zoé in the show Quidam by the Cirque du Soleil and she toured with them for two years before continuing her studies.
Career
Before Milk & Bone
She met Laurence Lafond-Beaulne at the Cegep Saint-Laurent.[2] They started their musical collaborations by touring with David Giguère and performing as vocalists and stage musicians for several other artists such as Jason Bajada, Sébastien Lacombe, Alex Nevsky, Elliot Maginot, Fanny Bloom, Les Sœurs Boulay, Karim Ouellet and Ariane Moffatt.[3] They were first featured together under the name Milk & Bone in the song Known by Sight by Valaire. Before joining Laurence on their project Camille worked in the Corona Theater.[4]
In June 2014 Camille released her first EP under the name Kroy, it was called Birthday and featured 4 songs.[5] She performed with her solo project in several cities of Canada, the US and Europe. In July of the same year Milk & Bone released their first single.
The Little Mourning and Scavenger era
More Milk & Bone singles were released building up for the duo's first album titled "Little Mourning".[6] The 2015 release is nominated for the Juno Awards and gets awarded three prizes at GAMIQ 2015 proving that the electro-pop synergy of the artists works for great effect.[7]
In 2016 Camille founded Behave Studios her own digital distribution label. That same year Milk & Bone worked on the soundtrack for the film King Dave by Podz with their song Nathalie.[8] Just a few weeks later, in August 2016 Camille would also release "Scavenger" her first album for her solo project Kroy,[9] where she gets to handle the entire artistic direction of her project, playing with spooky and childlike energy she finds suitable for her voice.[10] Scavenger was nominated a pop album of the year for the 2017 Gamiq awards and the clip for the single Learn was nominated too.[11]
Deception Bay
In 2017 Laurence and Camille were preparing their second album which they announced by releasing their single "Daydream".[12] Around that time Camille was featured as Kroy in Afterglow, a single by Alex Lustig who would later collaborate with Milk & Bone in their EP Dive and she also performed for her solo project.[13] The duo prepared a more complex and visually appealing show to tour with the new album, including more dance and lights to make a coherent experience.[14]
Deception Bay was released in February 2018 and found critical success[15][16] and went to win the 2019 Juno Award for electronic album[17] as well as getting nominations for the Polaris Prize[18] and the 2018 GAMIQ prize.[19] In the same year Milk & Bone won the 2018 GAMIQ award for artist of the year.[20] The show that the duo presented when touring with their second album went to win an ADISQ award.[21]
From Dive to Animachina
After a fruitful venture with their second album Milk & Bone decides to launch a new EP in collaboration with belgian producer Alex Lustig.[22] The album goes to win the 2019 GAMIQ award of Pop EP of the year. Renewing their collaboration with Podz the duo then goes to work on the music of the film Mafia Inc..[23] The same year the duo worked with the Cirque du Soleil to produce two shows that toured in the MSC Grandiosa.
The year 2019 saw two different projects from Camille's solo project: the Kroy single named "Chevy 85" in which she purposefully went to a more unexpected concept from her[24] and the single "Moonstone", her first song written in French for which she recruited the pen of Cœur de Pirate and that came to be as a part of the music for the documentary Sisterhood (Ainsi soient-elles) by Maxime Faure.[25]
Camille continued working on her solo project and collaborating with artists outside Milk & Bone during the next years, despite the general slowdown in the music industry due to Covid. She released the single "Opinel" a return to a more personal and intense creative place.[26][27] She also was featured in "Rain", one of the songs from Apashe's album Renaissance.[28]
In 2021 she released her single "Ryan Atwood".[29] She also collaborated with Felix Cartal in the single "Too Late" earlier that same year.[citation needed]
At the start of 2022 Camille departed from a strictly musical performance to bring Animachina to life, providing a sensorial and visual experience involving machinery, fragility and emotion.[30] This collaboration with the Creative School of Ryerson University featured assembly robots performing diverse tasks near the artist building up a tension and a proximity between the living and the automaton which was already latent within the project Kroy since the photoshoot dating back from Opinel.
Chrysalism era
In 2022 Milk & Bone started to release Bigger Love, their first single in three years. They then released the singles Borders and Movies before announcing they are preparing a third album by the name Chrysalism which is set to be released on October 28, 2022.[31] In this project the duo is collaborating with producer Micah Jasper. The duo makes a cameo in the Netflix film Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between in which they perform their music.[32]
