Her mother's family comes from Cornwall, though Dale describes herself as a "Celtic mongrel", with Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ancestry in addition to Cornish.

[3] At the age of eighteen, while a student at the University of Waterloo,[4] she discovered Medievalism through the Society for Creative Anachronism, and began composing songs inspired by Arthurian legend and other fantasy books she had grown up enjoying.

Trial included her most popular song, "Mordred's Lullaby", which went viral after release and counted over twenty million views on YouTube as of August 2020.

[10][11] On April 3, 2014, the Globe and Mail listed her as number six on a list of "the top 10 Canadian entrepreneurial crowdfunding campaigns of the moment" for her Indiegogo campaign to fund "CELTIC AVALON", a self-described "big King-Arthur-themed touring show & concert DVD, and youth educational program.

[13] On August 25, 2020, Dale was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association's Hall of Fame during that year's virtual Aurora Awards ceremony.

"[17]:117 Dale's early album The Trial of Lancelot (1999, with songs written between 1996 and 1999), features instrumentation that includes piano, guitars, flute, fiddle, cello, and various kinds of drums.

[9][17]:122 Call the Names (2001) has much barer instrumentation than Trial, and according to the BBC features "humorous and poignant" songs inspired by the everyday challenges of Renaissance life.

Kent identifies Dale as infusing Cornish popular music with "ethereal and soaring female vocalization," placing her in a genre also occupied by artists including Mary Black, Loreena McKennitt, Maire Brennan, and Enya.

Her song about the legend of Culhwch and Olwen is, according to a 2011 essay by Megan MacAlystre, "one of only a handful of musical settings of the tale to be found", and is "among the most readily available"—the long legend of "how Culhwch won Olwen" is shortened into a "jaunty" five-minute-long song that stands out from what MacAlystre calls identifies as more familiar tales on the Trial of Lancelot album.

[21] The Road to Santiago (2005) extends beyond the Celtic styles of her earlier albums, and includes influences from "jazz, art song, shanties, Spanish/North African rhythms and modal melodies, medieval court music and contemporary pop balladry," according to a review in the Toronto Star.

[24] Dale's lyrics are quoted in many of the novels in S. M. Stirling's The Emberverse series, including The Sword of the Lady (2009), The High King of Montival (2010), The Tears of the Sun (2011), Lord of Mountains (2012), The Given Sacrifice (2013), The Golden Princess (2014), The Desert and the Blade (2015), and Prince of Outcasts (2016).

[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Tanya Huff's novel The Wild Ways (2011) is dedicated to Dale, "who sang about Selkies and started the whole thing".