Ketevan “Katie” Melua, known as Ketino to her family, was born in Georgia in 1984, then part of the Soviet Union, where she spent her first years with her grandparents. Later she moved with her parents and brother to the town of Batumi, Ajaria where her father worked as a heart specialist. In 1993, in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War, the family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father took up a position at the prestigious Royal Victoria Hospital. The family remained in Belfast, living close to Falls Road, until Melua was thirteen. Then they moved to Sutton, London, and some time later moved again to Redhill, Surrey. Melua recently moved to an apartment in Notting Hill where she transformed the spare bedroom into a recording studio. Melua speaks Georgian, Russian and English and is partly of Canadian and Russian ancestry.

After completing her GCSEs at the all-girls' grammar school Nonsuch High School in Cheam, Sutton, Melua attended the BRIT School for the Performing Arts in the London Borough of Croydon, undertaking a BTEC with an A-level in music. She began to write songs when at the school.

It was when performing at a Brit School showcase that Melua caught the eye of Mike Batt, an English songwriter and producer who was originally looking for an acid-rock band, bass player and a singer capable of singing "jazz and blues in an interesting way". After hearing Melua sing "Faraway Voice", Batt signed the 18 year-old Melua to his small Dramatico recording and management company and sent her into the studio.

Call off the Search featured two songs written by Melua: "Belfast (Penguins and Cats)", a song about Melua's experience of her time in the troubled capital of Northern Ireland, and "Faraway Voice", a song about the death of Eva Cassidy It was initially difficult for Melua and Batt to get airplay for the album's lead single, "The Closest Thing to Crazy". This changed when BBC Radio 2 producer Paul Walters heard the single and played it on the popular Terry Wogan breakfast show.

Melua's second album, Piece by Piece, was released on 26 September 2005. Its lead single was "Nine Million Bicycles", which was released a week before the album on 19 September. The first UK airplay for the single was on the Terry Wogan show on August 1. The album contains four more songs written by Melua herself, four more by Batt, one Batt/Melua collaboration and three more songs described as new versions of "great songs". The band line-up was the same as on the first album. The album debuted at the number-one spot on the UK Albums Chart on the week of 3 October 2005.

A double A-side of the Melua-penned "I Cried for You" and a cover of The Cure's "Just like Heaven" (1988), which is the theme song to the film Just like Heaven, was released in the UK on 5 December and peaked at number 35. A third single, "Spider's Web" was released on 17 April 2006 and peaked at number 52 in the UK. Towards the end of 2006, Melua released the single, "It's Only Pain", which was written by Mike Batt. This was followed by the release of "Shy Boy", also written by Batt.

Melua's third album, Pictures, in the U.K. was released on 1 October 2007 and has been announced to be the last of her albums in collaboration with Mike Batt as a creative team. Pictures in the first eight months after the release has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and over 450,000 copies in the UK alone, being certified Platinum and becoming the 49th Bestselling album in 2007.

On 2 October 2006, Melua entered the Guinness Book of Records for playing the deepest underwater concert 303 metres below sea level on Statoil's Troll A platform in the North Sea. Melua and her band underwent extensive medical tests and survival training in Norway before flying by helicopter to the rig. Melua later described achieving the record as "the most surreal gig I have ever done".