Shive is a cellist, singer and guitarist, formerly of the band Tattle Tale and now fronting her own ensemble, Bonfire Madigan.

Shive's parents were "intentional future community" people; her mother called her Running Pony until she was about six years old, and regularly changed her name.

[11] Shive says she has been actively hearing voices and having experiences of what mainstream psychiatry would call delusions but that she frames differently, including mood extremes, all her life.

[5] In 2003 she became a founding collective member of The Icarus Project[5] alongside Sascha Scatter, Jacks Ashley McNamara and Will Hall.

[12] Hall credits Shive as the conceptual origin of Icarus Project's embrace of the harm reduction framework for psychiatric drug withdrawal.

Chad Jones, reviewing her performance in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at the American Conservatory Theater for SF Theatre Examiner, wrote "What makes the play worth seeing is the live music provided by punk cellist/vocalist Bonfire Madigan Shive, a fascinating performer who connects to the play more viscerally than the actors.