By Sukant Deepak

New Delhi, Sep 10 (IANS): It started during the engineering days of the twin duo, Sagar & Sahil, when they would collectively make music along with their cousin Mohit Deen, who at the time was studying sound production and engineering at 'Beat Factory' in the national capital. Sahil played the piano while Sagar played the guitar and decided to make videos as well. All the band members are engineers. And yes, none of them is a professionally trained musician.

The New Delhi-based Indie band, 'Twin Strings' has collaborated with diverse artists, including Nupur Sanon, Pavitra Krishnan, Raghav Chaitanya, Rashmeet Kaur and Akanksha Bhandari, and have taken YouTube by storm with their trending covers that have garnered millions of views, were on a lookout to find the fourth member who would be their lead vocalist when they discovered Manav on Instagram.

"In mid-2017, we discovered him on social media singing a casual cover of a Lucky Ali classic. Manav at that point was working in an IT MNC. Ever since his childhood days, he had primarily been a keyboardist, having been a part of one of India's most recognised metal bands "Guillotine," among others. However, it was his voice that caught our attention," remembers Sagar.

In July 2017, the band released the first-ever cover track in collaboration with Manav -- titled 'Raabta', post which they went on to do a number of collaborations with him until 2019 when he joined the band as a full-time singer.

"The reason I am singing today is that Sahil-Sagar convinced me to do so..." smiles Manav.

The band members have performed in major cities, including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore, Pune and Bhopal, and at major festivals like 'Horn Ok Fest Delhi', 'Beeredup Fest Delhi', 'Social Nation Mumbai' and 'Mood Indigo' stress the shift from engineering to music was quite smooth.

"We all were working in corporate set-ups. When people started appreciating our music and started calling us for live gigs, we mutually decided to get into music full-time. It was one the best decisions so far," says Sagar.

While admitting that social media has an important role to play in any contemporary independent artist's profile, Sahil asserts, "It does matter a lot in this era of reels and content creation. But that is not everything. There are more important things one needs to focus on, social media is just a part of it."

While the post-pandemic era has seen a dramatic decline in the number of concerts, shows and sponsorships, things are looking up for 'Twin Strings'.

"For us, things have been great and we have not really felt any kind of decline. Whenever we get free time, we are shooting something or the other," adds Sahil.

Pleased that almost every label, radio station and music page has started a new section for indie music, Sagar says that in contemporary times it is more about quality than having a huge budget to produce and release a song.

While major corporates are mostly inclined towards big artists, Sagar and the band members, who will be performing in Bahrain, Dubai and Phuket in October, says, "We are noticing that many companies are coming forward and considering independent artists as their main act."