Gourlay had a globe-trotting childhood. Born in Jamaica to parents of Russian ancestry in 1982, he grew up in the Bahamas, the Philippines, Japan, and finally, England, where he found the schools exotic because he had attended mostly American-style institutions. His first instrument was the trombone, and as a teen, he realized that he was spending every minute he could on music and resolved to make it a career. He also studied the piano. Gourlay attended the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester, studying trombone, but it was while playing in university ensembles during this period that he became fascinated by the role of the conductor and began to take conducting courses at the Royal College of Music in London. He worked there as an assistant to Bernard Haitink and Roger Norrington, and soon, he was named a substitute in place for various conductors, including Colin Davis, for whom he filled in twice at the Barbican Centre in London. In the 2000s, he worked as an orchestral trombonist with various groups, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, making several recordings. A first prize at the Cadaqués Orchestra International Conducting Competition in 2010 helped push him definitively toward conducting, and he spent two years as assistant conductor under Mark Elder at the Hallé (then the Hallé Orchestra). In 2011, Gourlay made his recording debut as a conductor, leading the London Symphony Orchestra on the album Charlie Siem Plays Bruch, Wieniawski, and Ole Bull.

Gourlay became principal guest conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León in 2014; the following year, he was elevated to principal conductor. His contract was extended through 2020, and during this period, he established a new in-house label for the orchestra. Gourlay has appeared widely as a guest conductor in Britain and abroad, with the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, among many other groups. In 2022, he conducted the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the BBC Proms, and his plans for the 2022-2023 season included a German tour with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and the Bremer Philharmoniker. Gourlay has also been quite active as a conductor of opera, leading the world premiere of Tom Coult's Violet at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2022 and planning to conduct Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen at Britain's Opera North. Gourlay has made several more recordings, including one with the London Philharmonic in 2022 of his own Parsifal Suite Wagner arrangement on the Orchid Classics label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi