Most likely (in the US, at least), yes. With a VPN, no. I stopped torrenting for many years because if I could afford a VPN I could afford to pay for Netflix. Now Netflix is double that price and everything has fractured into a half dozen evil services that cancel the shows I watch for tax breaks whether I pay them or not.

Then with the descent into fascism in this country I decided I wanted a VPN regardless.

Not guaranteed, no. It depends solely on whether the torrent in question is monitored by a copyright troll firm, in which case they'll catch your IP in their regular sweeps and fire off automated complaint letters to the ISP, who then forward it on to you. The ISP itself doesn't monitor your traffic in that way.

Not all torrents are watched by these firms, not even close, and ISPs often forward the complaints along without taking any action against the subscriber. Some ISPs, however, were successfully sued by the copyright mafia over not doing enough to "fight piracy" or whatever, and now will cut you off the internet entirely and close your account after some stupidly low number of complaints.