The two started out as part of the children's musical group Neposedy before being managed by producer and director Ivan Shapovalov and signing with Russian record label Neformat. The album was certified platinum by the IFPI for one million copies sold in Europe and became the first album by a foreign group to reach number one in Japan. The duo represented Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song " Ne ver, ne boysya ", finishing third.
The former was promoted with the international hit " All About Us ". The duo ventured into other projects, such as creating their own production company T. Music and promoting the film inspired by their story, You and I Their last pair of albums, Vesyolye Ulybki and Waste Management , followed between and , respectively. Before production of t. Katina was also in a band named "Avenue" between and With this idea in mind, Shapovalov and Voitinskiy organized auditions in Moscow in early for teenage female vocalists.
By the end of auditioning, the partners narrowed their search down to ten girls, including the members that finally became t. Lena and Julia knew each other before the auditions. Thus, in late , year-old Julia Volkova was added to the group to complete the duo. She also started recording not long after Lena's "Yugoslavia" demo was finished. According to Katina, Shapovalov was inspired to create the duo after the release of the Swedish film Show Me Love which focused on the romance between two school girls.
Over the next year, Katina and Volkova recorded songs with their producers. Voitinskij left the project, and Shapovalov signed Elena Kiper as co-producer and co-writer for their debut album.
The song describes the turmoil in a girl's soul because she is in love with another girl, but is afraid, as society frowns upon this. She asks her parents for forgiveness. Elena Kiper has been credited with the song, explaining that the idea came to her when she fell asleep at her dentist's office and had a dream in which she kissed another woman.
