Born to folk-music-loving parents, twin sisters Nalani and Sarina Bolton attended concerts and sing-a-longs “in the womb,” eventually joining in vocally themselves at about five years old. Their formal classical piano training began a year later. Their mother made sure their informal music education included all the great —songwriters Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen as well as the Beatles and Alanis Morissette.

“I told my mom that I fell asleep thinking about music and woke up thinking about it too. I think that’s when she knew she was in trouble,” Sarina recalls.

Songwriting, which became their greatest passion, followed soon after. “It’s my therapy,” said Sarina. “It’s the best way I have of expressing my emotions.”

“If our songs can have a positive effect on someone, make them feel not so alone, then that’s what makes us want to keep writing songs,” added Nalani.

I got the privilege to interview these two talented girls and here were their answers to what I asked them.

Elyse: Introduce yourselves.

Nalani and Sarina: We are Nalani and Sarina and we are singer-songwriters from Flemington, N.J.

E: What made you girls want to be singers?

N&S: There was never that specific time for us saying, “Hey I wanna be a singer!” Singing and music has just always been so much a part of our lives we kind of just thought it was normal. We started off with musical theater and ended up taking opera lessons, but once we got to our sophomore year, we were watching a “battle of the bands” concert at our high school and we think around that time we both knew that we wanted to perform our own stuff.

E: What is the best part about doing music?

N&S: The best part about doing music is getting people’s responses…hearing from someone how they relate to a song that is so close and personal is an unbelievable feeling. Experiencing that connection with people is always inspiring.

E: What is the hardest part about doing music?

N&S: There are three really hard things about music. One is writers’ block. There are those days where you feel like you’re never going to write again so you have to do everything in your power to get your inspiration back. Secondly is mixing music with business. It’s so hard to look at your own piece of art as a business, but it is necessary to understand how it works in order to navigate in this industry, while keeping your vision. The third hardest part about music is having a normal social life!

E: If you girls could work with any producer who would it be?

N&S: If we could work with any producer, it would be Dan Wilson…he is a phenomenal writer and captures the music and emotion in a song without cluttering it. We would also like to at least be in the same room as Max Martin and just pick his brain!

E: Where is somewhere you always wanted to travel to?

N&S: We would really like to travel to Japan, Australia or Paris… for one: the culture, two: the food and three: the accents! We enjoy going to new places where we feel completely out of our element. We visited the Philippines a few years ago and took a lot home with us.

E: Who writes your songs or do you both?

N&S: Every song varies from either writing a song or idea separately and then coming together and feeding off each other to finish it, or sitting in a room together and coming up with something right off the spot. But no matter what, the two of us are a part of every song that we write.