He was born on August 29, 1921 in the village of Drosia (formerly named Halia) [1] near Chalkida, but his origin was from the village of Oktonia.

He got married at a very young age. Her husband was drunk, while during one of the beatings Sotiria threw vitriol on his face. For this he was sentenced to three years in prison, of which he served six months. After her release from prison, she returned to her family, but after quarrels with her family, she moved to Athens in October 1940, just at the beginning of the Greek-Italian war. These years he is not only fighting for survival, but also for resistance. She becomes a communist. He was arrested, tortured and imprisoned. After the liberation and after experiencing the savagery and the civil war persecutions, she met Vassilis Tsitsanis

After the civil war she was released and in 1947 she was hired as a singer in a nightclub in Athens with Vassilis Tsitsanis, who discovered her and whose songs are the most important in her repertoire. In 1948 a group of far-right fanatics entered the singing scene and beat her with the designation “Bulgarian” (communist), without her musicians daring to get up from their chairs.

Nevertheless, she was soon recognized as one of the best performers in rebetika. Some of her greatest hits are Cloudy Sunday, The Crabs and When You Drink at Vassilis Tsitsanis Tavern, with which she established herself in the field of folk music. In addition to Tsitsanis, he collaborated with many other composers, including Giannis Papaioannou (Open, Open) and Apostolos Kaldaras (I Said to Erase the Old).

Her career declined in the early 1960s, but returned in 1966 after collaborations with contemporary art composers such as Dionysis Savvopoulos (“Zeybekiko”), Elias Andriopoulos (Do Not Cry) [4] and Dimos Moutsis (De Les Chat).

Until the 1980s he continued to collaborate with the most important Greek composers of folk and rebetika music in many concerts and recordings. They were openly lesbians at a time when this was unthinkable. [6] From time to time she suffered various seizures with alcoholism problems while she was also addicted to gambling.

In March 1993 he developed severe health problems with emphysema, at which time he was diagnosed with pharyngeal cancer. Due to her financial problems, she got to the point of selling her records in Kolonaki. It sold out in an hour. During her hospitalization at Sotiria Hospital in 1994, she gave an interview to Nikos Kakaounakis in “E ‘autoforo”, speaking with difficulty due to cancer. After a few months she lost her voice, while the only ones next to her were her nieces. In March 1996 he appeared in an interview with Nana Palaitsaki in “5th appearance”.

He died on August 27, 1997 at Metaxa Hospital.

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