MATT Westcott speaks to Catherine Pierce, one half of the sister act, The Pierces, ahead of their appearance at the Sage Gateshead on September 17.

CATHERINE Pierce is drawing as my call is put through to her hotel room.

“I find it to be like a form of meditation,” she says. “There is really no pressure, if I don’t like it I don’t have to use it. With music there’s a little more pressure, especially now.”

If you are a fan of The Pierces you probably will have seen Catherine’s work without realising. She drew the cover for the album ‘Thirteen Tales Of Love And Revenge’ and before I disturbed her was designing posters ahead of her and her sister Allison’s tour to promote the latest album ‘Creation’.

“My paintings, people say, look like a folkier version of Gustav Klimt,” she says with a laugh. “My drawings? I guess it’s folk art in a way. I find it hard to describe music and art. I would rather just say look at it or listen to it.

“When I say folk art that doesn’t even ring true to me because it’s not quite that. It’s the same thing with our music. If people call it folk I am like ‘well, not exactly’.”

Thanks to the extraordinary success of their last album, ‘You & I’, the Pierces are now household names on both sides of the Atlantic.

But if you think the success was overnight, you would be wrong. In fact, such were their problems in breaking the big time that after three albums they nearly gave up altogether.

“It wasn’t rocky the entire time,” Catherine says of the road to here. “We had little pockets of success along the way. There was always something along the way to keep us going.

“But we would have moments of doubt and moments when it would get really hard. But then there would always be something to come along to encourage us.

“One time we were going to quit and this producer came out of the blue and wanted to help us, that happened again with Guy Berryman from Coldplay, which was obviously a huge step for us.

“Or we would get a song in a TV show or an opening gig with someone – there was always a little glimmer of hope keeping us going.”

Having the likes of Radio 2 DJs Chris Evans and Simon Mayo championing you helps too, but Catherine also likes to think it was meant to be.

“We ponder that a lot,” she says. “Is your fate already mapped out for you? Is it destiny or just random choices along the way?

“Looking back, it feels like it has happened the way it was supposed to.

“It wasn’t the way we imagined. You always hope for it to be easy and you hope to have huge success quickly, but sometimes that can be a curse rather than a blessing. We have both had happy lives and learned a lot so I am certainly not going to complain.”

She and her sister have a good working relationship, but they do have their sibling rivalries.

“We spend a lot of time together, but we do not live together,” she says.

“We have a hard time when we live together. It’s just too much. We love each other, but we work together, we are sisters, if we are in the same house too it’s just too much.

“We are only a block away, but that’s enough. That’s plenty. As long as we have our own space.”

Catherine hasn’t ruled out going solo in the future either.

“We both want to,” she says. “I think it’s kind of a fantasy. I think we will do it, it will play out eventually. But we may do it and miss each other.

“We may be lonely on the road without each other or the music may sound empty without the harmony, I don’t know.”

For now, at least, things sound better together.