[citation needed] Socha was brought up in Littleover, a suburb of Derby,[3] though for his secondary education he attended St Benedict Catholic School in the Darley Abbey area of the city.

[5] Socha's motivation for auditioning was his anger at being denied a role in the musical and his desire to prove his teachers wrong about his acting skills.

[2] He enrolled in the course when he was 14,[3] but was almost refused admission as he had failed to learn the monologue for his audition and was put in the "reserve group".

[6] In 2008, he was cast in Kenneth Glenaan's BAFTA Scotland-award winning film Summer, where he acted opposite Robert Carlyle.

[6] The same year, he appeared in Duane Hopkins's film Better Things and the independent small-budget comedy Dogging: A Love Story.

[6] In February 2009, Socha made his stage debut at Nottingham Playhouse in Glamour, a comedy by Stephen Lowe.

[3][6] The same year, he appeared in an episode of the science fiction police drama Paradox on BBC One and in the made-for-television film The Unloved for Channel 4.

[8] Despite his initial success, Socha was "penniless" and "waiting for work" for much of 2009 and early 2010, sitting at home and watching daytime television.

[9] His next big break came when Shane Meadows asked him to reprise the role of Harvey the bully for a four-part television series for Channel 4.

[10] Socha appeared in BBC Three's hit supernatural series Being Human in 2011, receiving good critical notice as the innocent young werewolf Tom McNair.

He missed his audition after a taxicab hit him and fled the scene while he was helping a friend move furniture across a road in Normanton.

[8] He won the role of Tom, a young werewolf who has been brought up in the wild by his father and taught to hunt vampires.

In 2021, the BBC announced that Socha had been cast as "King" David Hartley, leader of the Cragg Vale Coiners, in Shane Meadows' period drama, The Gallows Pole.