Sharlene Gamo is a 15 year-old student at All Saints Catholic College, Liverpool. She loves art, singing and dancing. Likewise, Catherine Tiatco is of the same age, goes to the same school and has the same interest as Sharlene. This common ground brought this two young girls together plus of course, K-pop.
"People underestimate K-pop but they actually train really hard, like sing and dance really hard and doing it live, [and if you think of it] critical judgment from the crowd is hard as well," said Catherine.
Catherine recounted a day from last year when the University of New South Wales (UNSW) hosted the K-pop Core showcase; this event had brought them closer that made them decide to audition together.
"We started learning dances by ourselves through youtube and [through] self-taught and we auditioned there and we actually got in. Then we got to perform which is really fun and from there we started to continue. We always try to join in events when we could," shared Catherine.
The group which consists of three members is open to explore different genres which include Rhythm and Blues (R&B), pop, hip hop and K-pop.
Though they have similar interests, Sharlene and Catherine have different stories on how they begun to discover their passion for singing.
For Sharlene, it came at an early age of three: "My older sister influenced me to going into music. I really took that on and [I] started off at a young age and explored it and really took it out to the community."
Catherine shared that no one from her family really took her singing seriously until the age of seven: "No one in my family really sings, yeah, until my 7th birthday I decided to sing 'Truly, Madly, Deeply,' it was one of my favorite songs."
Sharlene wanted to be known in the group as someone who is bright, funny and a 'mood maker' while Catherine hoped she would be known as the 'all smiles' girl of the group.
The two multi-talented teens admired the likes of Tori Kelly, Adele and Kehlani. Both loved their voices and some other reasons like; "I guess it would be Tori Kelly because apart from her really great singing voice, she's also really talented in producing music and her songs are really close to her heart, and you can really feel that meaning from her," shared Sharlene when asked who was her favourite singer.
The two members of LVL 4 who are enjoying the 'closer' friendship within their newly established girl group have no plans of going solo a few years from now.
"I guess what has helped us become really close is the friendship that developed from this dancing group so I guess going solo isn't really the idea that we have seen right now. Yeah, but for now, we'd really love to last together," said Sharlene.
Friendship, singing, dancing, arts and K-pop, oh how we love to be young again!
Want to hear more of their angelic voice? Listen to LVL 4's rendition of Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift feat. The Civil Wars in this exclusive interview.
