She has been influenced by a diverse range of singers and writers including Betty Carter, Bessie Smith, Leonard Cohen, Olivier Messiaen, Miles Davis and poets William Butler Yeats, Paul Muldoon and Eva Salzman.

[2] She moved to London in 1987 and sang in a band with Jean Toussaint, Jason Rebello, Alec Dankworth, and Mark Taylor before studying jazz at the Guildhall School of Music in 1988 and 1989.

In 1993 she formed a band with pianist Huw Warren, bassist Steve Watts, and drummer Roy Dodds, recording the first two albums, Aliliu and Yell of the Gazelle, of seven on the Babel Label with them.

During 2008, she toured England performing her album Secret Life of a Girl, her first since Romance and Revolution in 2004 and the seventh to be released on the Babel Label, with her band of pianist Liam Noble, cellist Kate Shortt, guitarist Phil Robson, bassist Dave Whitford, percussionist Thebe Lipere, and drummer Simon Lea.

In 2012 Tobin, who with her partner Phil Robson is now spending much of her time in New York, won a BASCA British Composer Award for her settings of poems by WB Yeats, Sailing To Byzantium.

Pelt (2016), an album of her settings of poems and lyrics by contemporary Pulitzer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon, is the completion of that commission.