Kirsty Bosley: Bloodstock - there's no place I'd rather be

Sounds like a really scary thing when you look at it literally – blood, death, devil. But there is, in actual fact, nowhere else I'd rather be on a summer weekend. What sounds like a macabre trip to a weird place with odd people is actually nothing of the sort.

I have quite a varied taste in music, and can be found singing along to whatever soundtrack is playing in my head on any given day. It doesn't even matter what kind of a mood I'm in, I'll be singing in the ladies at work, in the corridors, in the shower, in the pub.

This means that I could be singing Céline Dion's Think Twice (THIS IS GETTING SEEEEERIOUS!), You Win Again by the Bee Gees (easily of of the greatest songs ever written) or a song by Cattle Decapitation. It really just depends on the day.

I harbour a lifelong love of music that began with my well-documented obsession with Top of the Pops 2. Through little girl's school, I taped stuff off the radio and was influenced by the musical tastes of my big sister. Kelli is 10 years older than me, and once skived off sixth form for a week to sleep outside the NEC to see Take That on every night of their stint at the arena. A decade later, I started at the school she'd long since left, and the fact that she'd bunked lessons to see Jason, Mark, Robbie, Gary and the rubbish one was not forgotten by her former English teacher. He recanted the tale to me as a bit of a warning, I expect. He knew what we were like: a bit mad.

It wasn't until I was a bit of an outcast teenager that I discovered the music that would really electrify me for all the years to come.

The seed was planted when I was small, watching an episode of The Young Ones. Looking back now, I wasn't really old enough to watch it. I didn't know what Alexei Sayle was on about and was really only in it for Rik Mayall's slapstick and the talking hamster.

On this particular episode, Motörhead made an appearance. Lemmy, with his really high-set mic stand, his aviator glasses and a voice that sounds like he smokes 800 Marlboros a day, followed by three shots of Jack Daniels and a gargle of sharp gravel, whirred like the most ferocious engine my little ears had ever heard. Everything about that performance stuck with me, and for every consecutive time that I watched it on reruns, I headbanged along to the Ace of Spades. I'm not even a big Motörhead fan, but that was my first foray into the world of much harder music.

There's something I adore about the surging, powerful passion of heavy metal and it's equally affecting genre cousins – death metal, thrash metal, black metal, grindcore and more. In high school, I suppose that made me a bit weird – a bit of a 'grebo'. It was a shame really. Kids that listened to bands such as Slipknot, KoRn (big R) and Metallica were seen as strange, depressed or odd.

For me, the beauty of what is considered extreme music lies in the proficiency it often takes to play them, its energy and high-octane performed and the way it just seems to make me want to move. The grooves and breakdowns in heavy metal by bands such as Pantera really electrify me; everything about it is uplifting.

My auntie took me to my first proper concert – Anthrax in Wolverhampton. I'd never seen anything like it before. Huge, middle-aged men, excited youngsters and other fans thrashed around in the mosh pit in a way that I'd never experienced. What looked like a violent melee was nothing of the sort. When someone fell over with the force of the crowd, the pit was there to lift them up – taking care to make sure that no one was injured. As I watched this human blending machine from afar, I realised that there was much more to being into this extreme music than just listening to Machine Head albums in the back bedroom. It was a collective love, and I was hooked.

I can see why people just don't 'get' it. With bands with names such as Cannibal Corpse, Slayer and Megadeth, it sounds horrible and frightening. The singing is often harsh, with shouting or screaming sounds taking the place of soft or playful vocals. It's really an acquired taste, hot with perceived anger. But now I've acquired it, I just can't get enough, and I'm not even angry.

The great thing about living in the Midlands is that heavy metal was created here. Bands such as Black Sabbath laid the groundwork for other bands to take the heavy metal banner and run. The clubs and pubs dotted around the area that specialise in playing music by these bands, and hosting acts that share the ethos, are wonderful places to spend time and get drunk. Meeting people that are passionate about the same music is wonderful, and moshing, singing or screaming along makes me feel alive.

In 2007, a girl called Sophie Lancaster was walking with her boyfriend through a park in Lancashire. She was a little bit like me, I guess; alternative with a love of a subculture that is misunderstood by those that just don't get it.

Because of the way she looked, Sophie was brutally attacked. It's as simple and as impossible to understand as that. Severe head injuries led to a coma, from which Sophie never recovered. She died from her injuries two weeks later. The investigation into her death found that she'd be murdered because she was a goth. Nothing more complex than just that.

Here at Bloodstock Festival there's a Sophie Lancaster stage. The platform for some of the biggest and best acts to play on serves to remind us that she lived, that she was one of us, and that the work continuing in her name is crucial to raise awareness of the prejudice and violence faced by people from alternative subcultures.

There's nothing creepy or odd, strange or horrible, depressing or miserable about metal. As I bang my head and raise my horns to the sky, I'll remember Sophie and headbang until I'm dizzy.

And then I might go and blast some Barbra Streisand. Don't judge me!