Sisters are doing it for themselves. TIM HUGHES talks to Emily Staveley-Taylor, one third of acoustic folk band The Staves

THERE are many advantages to being in a band with your sisters, but not everything can be expected to go smoothly.

“We do argue sometimes,” laughs Emily, who, with siblings Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, makes up acoustic pop sensation The Staves.

“But we are probably more open and honest than we would be with friends or colleagues, so we can tell each other to get lost or shout at each other for not getting the tea – which seems to be the main source of arguments – then forget about it and carry on. If we spoke to friends in the same way, it wouldn’t be so quickly forgotten!”

Emily, 30, right, is chatting to me during a break in songwriting at 26 year-old Jessica’s flat in London’s Shepherd’s Bush. Camilla, 24, left, is not around.

“It’s just the two of us,” she says, adding, with a giggle: “Milly is working on solo stuff for when the band breaks-up. Most of the time we are together but we need the odd day apart to immerse ourselves in what’s on our minds.”

Warm, engaging and heart-meltingly lovely, the almost a capella harmonies of The Staves are the perfect blend of sweet English folk and sun-soaked West Coast pop. And if there are glimmers of Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, and Crosby Stills and Nash in their music that’s because the girls were raised on a healthy diet of 1960s American singer-songwriters.

“Our parents aren’t professional musicians but are music lovers, and their music was on a lot when we were kids,” Emily explains. “We grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash and the Travelling Wilburys.

“They would sing and play the guitar and piano, and had friends who were singers too. We grew up thinking dad wrote The Times They are a Changin’ and Helplessly Hoping until we were old enough to know better.”

And the girls would join in with their own three-part harmonies.

“We really enjoyed singing and knew how to do it,” says Emily. “And when you have sung a few albums together in the back of the car you know which parts, tone and style to take. It was really nice. We all had the same taste in music, and it was that that made us love singing.”

The transition from back seat singers to stars who now pack venues on their headline tours (their show at the O2 Academy Oxford on April 19 is already sold-out) was a gradual one.

“Some friends of ours were in bands and said we should sing down the pub at open-mic sessions, which is where they would hang out,” says Emily.

“It was like singing in front of our friends but at a higher level, and we really enjoyed it. Then we thought we’d get a load of mates together and do a whole gig.

“We’d sing an hour of covers, and do it again and again. Then we started writing and substituted the covers for our own songs. Eventually we were singing all our own songs and before we knew it, we had become a gigging band.

“Three years ago we were touring so much we couldn’t do our other jobs and decided to take it seriously.”

She adds: “The opportunities come along and you have to follow them – like being asked to do backing vocals on a Tom Jones album by a bloke we met in the pub two years ago. We have had the best time!”

A measure of their appeal comes from the fact their debut album Dead and Born and Grown was produced by legendary producers Glyn and Ethan Johns, who have individually worked with The Rolling Stones, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne and Kings of Leon.

Being in a band can put a strain on the closest of relationships, so, I wonder, how has life in close confinement affected the girls? “It’s pretty natural for us,” says Emily. “We grew up together and shared the same house, same bedroom and same school. We always hung out together and had the same friends. We just get on.

“I’ve never enjoyed working with anyone as much as with my sisters – and I have never laughed as much as with those two, either.

“It must be really hard to form a band with people you haven’t grown up with. We have a level of communication that is definitely wordless. We don’t have to discuss things as much as we would if we hadn’t grown up together or had the same shared experiences of music that have come from birth until now. And we only have to look at each other’s faces to know how things should sound.

“We are really close – as long as we know when to make each other tea!”

The Staves play the O2 Academy Oxford on April 19. Tickets have sold-out