Born and raised in Glasgow, Barnaby leads the revival of the northern triplepipe, the precursor of the bagpipe in Britain and Ireland. He also champions the art of canntaireachd, a chant which imitates the sound of the Highland bagpipe, and plays pibroch on a reproduction of a chanter owned by the Blind Piper of Gairloch (1656–1754).
His passion for giving a contemporary voice to ancient instruments has led to four projects with Delphian Records: In Praise of Saint Columba: the sound world of the Celtic Church (2014), Spellweaving: ancient music from the Highlands of Scotland (2016), Set upon the Rood: new music for choir & ancient instruments (2017) and Apollo & Dionysus: sounds from Classical Antiquity (2018). The first two were informed by his doctoral research on Hebridean piping at the University of Cambridge.
Barnaby appears in the Netflix movie Outlaw King (2018), leading Hebridean psalm-singing and playing the triplepipe as King Robert the Bruce’s piper. Recently, he began exploring pipes reproduced from Ancient Greek, Sumerian and Paleolithic finds. He also plays the lyre and provided music for the action game Assassin’s Creed Origins (2017), set in Graeco-Roman Egypt.