The first time Taiwanese singer-songwriter Crowd Lu performed at the Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts was in 2009.

He sold out two shows at the 245-seater Esplanade Recital Studio despite having released just one album, 100 Ways Of Living (2008).

Lu, 32, tells The Straits Times in an e-mail interview: "That was my first time performing in Singapore and it felt magical that in a place so far from Taipei, there were people listening to my songs."

He has since established himself as a musician of note, someone who writes and sings earnestly and honestly about life and love. He was named Best New Artist and Best Composer (for the track 100 Ways Of Living) at the prestigious Golden Melody Awards in 2009 and has released four more albums, most recently 2016's What A Folk!!!!!!.

At this year's Huayi, he will be performing at the 1,600-seater Esplanade Concert Hall on Feb 23.

The bespectacled singer has also been winning new fans with A Boy Named Flora A (2017), a popular television family drama set in Tainan. His performance as the man-child Hua Jia was much praised. And he reprises the role in the big screen version of the series in Back To The Good Times, slated to be released in Taiwan on Feb 9.

Lu shares several similarities with his character - "studied in university for many years, grew up in the countryside, a kid who gets along well with his family".

But, of course, he is not Hua Jia. He points out: "I'm more blessed than him. I had the opportunity to learn to play the guitar after getting crushed by a bus."

He picked up the guitar and started composing music when he was hospitalised for months after a serious traffic accident in his first year at Tamkang University in 2005. He graduated in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in Spanish literature.

One of his recent hits is Yu Zai (Little Fish), which is from the drama A Boy Named Flora A. It is a song that means a lot to him as he says: "I'm very grateful that this song gave me the opportunity to have a conversation in the ether with my late grandmother."

Even though acting has proven to be fruitful for him, fans of his songs need not worry that he will be distracted from putting out fresh material. He reassures that music performance remains his priority and he plans to finish work on a new album this year.

It has been reported that he likes to compose in the toilet and he says cheekily: "That's because in order to write a good song, you sometimes have to expend a lot of effort."