Looking back, Da Silva is amazed by their chutzpah. But, three decades on, the benefits of that early innocence are clear. Their 1979 debut album – called The Raincoats and reissued next week – remains a startlingly peculiar work, full of careening rhythms and coltish melodies. As Birch says, when you don't know what you're doing, "you have to be inventive. We made sounds that were our own."

The Raincoats could have been just another flash-in-the-pan punk act. But over the years their off-kilter, idiosyncratic music has proved unexpectedly influential, for feminist musicians such as Beth Ditto and German art-punk collective Chicks On Speed – as well as more unexpected groups, like grunge icons Nirvana.

So it is that Birch and Da Silva now find themselves unusually busy. They've just toured the US; they're setting up their own label, We ThRee; and they're devising a multimedia art exhibition for London. Birch is also filming a documentary, Fairytales, about the Raincoats' story – which, it turns out, is even wonkier than their music: a fractured tale of disappearing drummers and disagreements between the two songwriters, eventually resulting in a split in 1984, shortly after their third album, Moving. "We broke up after every record," says Da Silva. "We broke up after every gig," says Birch.

The trouble, Birch adds, is that the two women are "polar opposites". Describing how they met, at London's Hornsey School of Art, Birch emphasises the difference in their appearance, the whiteness of her skin compared with Da Silva's muscovado tan (Birch is from Nottingham, Da Silva is Portuguese). Their approach to art varied, too: Da Silva was experimenting with 3D paintings; Birch was exploring video and conceptual art. And when it came to making music, says Birch, although they had similar aims, the routes they took were completely divergent, giving rise to "a bit of snarling. We tug and tussle. It makes it much more interesting – and much more painful."

That tension is still apparent, as the pair sit side-by-side at Birch's kitchen table, overlooked by a vivid painting of a dancer in a swirling green dress. They are respectful of each other, but sometimes brusque; you wonder how hard Shirley O'Loughlin, their cheerful manager, has to work to keep things smooth.

It took an outsider – Kurt Cobain – to bring the two women back together in the 1990s. During their decade apart, Birch studied film and almost "forgot I was a musician", while Da Silva composed soundtracks for contemporary dance performances and worked in an antiques shop. It was there that Cobain visited her in 1992 to ask if she could replace his worn-out copy of the band's debut record. He later invited the Raincoats to tour with Nirvana, although his suicide prevented this.

Cobain's enthusiasm, combined with Birch and Da Silva's renewed appreciation of their past, not only encouraged them to start playing live again, but led them to record a fourth album, 1996's Looking in the Shadows. This time, says Birch, "I didn't feel nervous – I felt I'd found my own feet."

The pair then drifted apart again, Birch raising her two adopted daughters, Da Silva nursing her sister and mother through serious illnesses. But the Raincoats were still a going concern, playing at Robert Wyatt's ^­ Meltdown festival in 2001 and collaborating with Chicks On Speed.

The fact that the duo are still performing, at an age when most women have abandoned their pop careers, surprises them both. "I get shocked by thinking how old I am," admits Da Silva, 61. At the same time, her age strikes her as irrelevant, since the music she made 30 years ago still feels fresh, and playing live is such a relaxed experience: "I just feel like we're in a living room with a few people who want to be there."

It helps, says Birch, that the multimedia world they move in now is much less restrictive than the punk era. "We've entered a place where we can cross boundaries, as women and artists and musicians," she says. "There's lots of room for experimentation." And, at 54, she sees no reason to stop. "We went to see Yoko Ono [who is 76] recently, and I kept thinking, 'Twenty more years!' That's my new slogan. We're getting on, we're female, we're not supposed to be here – but we are! Twenty more years!"

Maddy Costa, The Guardian, 05.11.09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/05/the-raincoats-reform