Kathrine Shepard was born in San Diego, California before her family moved to Oslo at a young age. She has been based in Paris since 2014. She has classical training and musicology from the University of Oslo. The name of the Sylvaine project was inspired by the word “sylvan” (meaning forest, wood) and the French poet Paul Verlaine.

Kathrine Shepard sings mostly clean in her project Sylvaine, but incorporates high screams on her albums Atoms Aligned, Coming Undone (2018) and Nova (2022).