Behind LILASKA: The Person, Influences and World Before the Music
Gary WhittakerCreator Spotlight · Deeper Profile · LILASKA
Behind LILASKA: the person, influences and world before the music
The First Look documented an artist identity still being built. This time, the story moves closer to the person behind it.
Eliss is not rushing to look finished. She is trying to understand what belongs inside LILASKA before a first serious release begins setting expectations for the project.
What changed after the First Look
We now know much more about the person behind the project: the creators she studies, the skills she already has, the skills she wants to build, why community matters to her, why she is deliberately not rushing into music, and what she hopes LILASKA can eventually become.
The first LILASKA profile was deliberately written as a beginning. At that point, the most interesting thing about the project was not a finished catalog or a polished artist biography. It was the fact that Eliss was trying to connect music, fashion, gaming, beauty, drawing, darker 2000s internet aesthetics and her own personality without reducing herself to one content category.
After that First Look, I asked her to go deeper — into influences, skills, ambitions, strengths and the parts of herself that are not immediately visible from a profile page.
Her answers make the project easier to understand.
“I think I’m a pretty versatile person. I like trying different creative things, and if something interests me, I usually want to learn how to do it.”
— Eliss / LILASKA
The person behind the public name
Eliss is the public name she chose for herself. Her real name is Irmina, and she often goes by Irma. She told me that she did not always like how uncommon her name felt in Russia. Later, discovering a singer named Irma whose music she liked changed that relationship a little.
Eliss, however, became the name that felt right for the public-facing identity. She connects it partly to Alice as a character and partly to her affection for the Twilight films. That detail matters because LILASKA is already being built through selection: names, references, moods and pieces of culture that feel compatible even when they come from different places.
She has also carried a desire for recognition and connection for a long time. Since childhood, she says she dreamed about being popular and having many friends. At sixteen, she began imagining a future in the United States. She is drawn to the culture, music, people and the kind of creative life she associates with it.
Part of LILASKA is therefore being built from distance: geographically distant from the audience she hopes to reach, still developing the English she wants to use with that audience, and looking for a community that understands the style, humor, goals and energy she feels connected to.
“I don’t just want people to follow an account. I want to find people who feel like they belong in the same world.”
— Eliss / LILASKA
That may be the clearest description yet of what the project is actually for.
Three influences, three different lessons
When I asked which artists or creators help her picture what she might build, Eliss named Arina Savastru, Lil Peep and Eminem. She was careful about the distinction between inspiration and imitation. She is not trying to become any of them. She is studying different things each represents.
With Eminem, she is especially drawn to his 2000s-era image and writing: simple, loud, confident, sharp and immediately recognizable. The appeal is not only musical. It is the clarity of personality.
With Lil Peep, the pull is more atmospheric. She connects to the way music, visuals, fashion and emotion exist inside one recognizable aesthetic. For someone trying to build a project that will eventually include original music, this matters: the song does not have to carry the entire identity by itself.
Arina Savastru enters from another direction. Eliss has begun developing clothing and fashion ideas partly inspired by her, and she hopes that one day Savastru might notice the work. That ambition is still early, but it shows that fashion is not just decoration around the artist project. Eliss wants to make things herself.
The common thread
Recognition matters to her — not only attention, but the ability for someone to see a line, image, outfit, character or song and know who it belongs to. That is the same problem she identified in the First Look when she said she wanted people to see something and think, “That feels like LILASKA.”
She is already creating before the first song
Music may eventually become the most visible part of LILASKA, but Eliss is not waiting for music to begin creating.
Drawing is currently the skill she feels strongest in. She keeps a sketchbook and has completed paintings. She has started exploring clothing designs. She enjoys video editing and photo editing. In games, she gravitates toward spaces where she can build and design: Roblox, and especially building inside The Sims 4.
The pattern is consistent. She likes creating environments, appearances, characters and worlds.
That makes her interest in music more interesting, not less. She is not approaching a future song as an isolated object. She already thinks about the visuals, concept, fashion and world that would surround it.
“I know I don’t want LILASKA to be only about the music itself. I want the whole world around it to feel intentional.”
— Eliss / LILASKA
Why she is not rushing the first release
Eliss wants to learn to sing. She wants vocal lessons. She sees herself eventually writing her own lyrics and performing her own songs.
What stands out is that she is not treating the desire to make music as a reason to release immediately.
She told me that she wants to find the right sound and style for LILASKA first. Once she finds something that genuinely feels like her, then she wants to build music around it.
That is a more useful development question than “How fast can I put a track out?” If LILASKA is meant to become a connected creative identity, the first serious release should help define the world rather than simply prove that a song exists.
Before the first serious release
There is useful work to do: vocal development, lyric writing, sound exploration, visual language, rights and credits, artwork, artist profiles, distribution choices and a release plan that belongs to the same identity. The point is not to delay. It is to make the release feel connected to everything around it.
Dark aesthetics, but not a sadness-first identity
The most revealing answer Eliss gave me was not about music.
Looking at LILASKA from the outside, someone could easily assume that darker visual references point toward a sadness-centered identity. She told me that is not how she sees herself.
“For me, a failure is more of a reason to improve than a reason to stay sad.”
— Eliss / LILASKA
Her instinct, she says, is to look for a reason to keep going. If something fails, she would rather use the experience to improve the next attempt.
That creates a useful contrast inside LILASKA. The visual world can be dark without the person at its center being defined by despair. That contrast may eventually become one of the things that gives the identity more dimension.
English is part of the artist development too
Eliss is currently working on her English and describes herself as being around A1 level. The practical goal is straightforward: she wants to communicate comfortably with the audience she hopes to reach.
But language is also part of the creative development.
If she eventually wants to write lyrics in English, speak directly to an English-speaking community, collaborate internationally and present herself confidently in interviews or performances, language ability affects much more than captions.
That makes her English progress worth following alongside her vocals and music. It is part of the same development story.
Not every future has to fit inside the brand
Eliss also told me that she is interested in studying dentistry in the United States someday. She connects that interest to her mother, a nurse whose work caring for older people helped shape Eliss's respect for healthcare.
I am keeping that in the profile because a deeper creator story should not flatten someone into a brand. LILASKA is a creative identity Eliss is building. It is not the totality of the person building it.
At nineteen, more than one future can be real at the same time.
What we can actually watch from here
The First Look preserved the beginning. This deeper profile gives us a more useful set of milestones.
Does her drawing become part of the visual language of LILASKA? Do the fashion ideas become real pieces? Does her English become strong enough for direct audience relationships? Does she begin vocal training? What happens when she moves from musical references to an original sound? Which parts of the 2000s, grunge and darker internet aesthetic remain once she has to make those influences distinctly her own?
And perhaps the biggest question: can the community she wants begin to form around a recognizable person rather than a single successful post?
Where the story stands now
LILASKA is becoming more specific without pretending to be finished.
We now know more about the person, the influences, the skills already present and the skills still being built. Music matters, but so do drawing, fashion, editing, games, language, community and the visual world around a future release.
The next useful milestone is evidence: a stronger piece of art, an early fashion concept, vocal progress, a sound experiment, a lyric, a collaboration, or the first original release that genuinely feels like it belongs inside this world.
Start at the Beginning
Read the LILASKA First Look
The first profile documents the project before this deeper personal context was available — including the early audience experiments, the challenge of combining multiple interests and why preserving the imperfect beginning matters.
Follow LILASKA
Instagram remains the primary public profile for the project, with TikTok as an additional window into the gaming and visual experiments around it.
Gary Whittaker
Founder and Operator, JackRighteous.com
Create What You Love | Love What You Create.
