Alessia Cara battling hair loss

Singer Alessia Cara has been battling hair loss since her school days.

The Here singer has opened up for the first time about her struggle with bald patches, which started around the start of high school after she began straightening her hair because people told her it was frizzy.

Her hair would fall out in clumps and she would always try to cover up the problem, even when she started her singing career.

"It was one of the scariest things," she told Lipstick.com. "It got to the point where it was visibly gone. I struggled with that a lot, especially going into high school. You have so many pressures - what people are going to think of you - and I was going into it losing all my hair. I had, like, nothing left. It was patches of missing hair that people would point out, because people are mean in high school."

The 20-year-old couldn't understand why it was happening to her and she would try different hairstyles to cover the bald patches. Though she’s now learned to accept the issue and no longer cares if people take a picture of her which exposes it.

And the struggle has even inspired her to write the song Scars to Your Beautiful, which she hopes will help all types of women to feel good about themselves and realize that beauty comes in many different forms.

She’s also following in singer Alicia Keys' footsteps by opting to go make-up free while promoting her new track.

"How could I be preaching a song about being yourself and being beautiful and perfect the way you are - and have a full face of makeup?" she explains. "I want to show people that I am comfortable enough to go on national television and just be myself. It would only feel right if I am 100 per cent me."