Laverne was born and brought up in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, in a large family. One grandfather had been a shipbuilder, another a coalminer. Her father was a sociology lecturer at Newcastle University, Dr Leslie Gofton, and her mother was a Teacher. She first attended St. Mary's R.C. Primary School in 1982, where she befriended Marie Nixon, later to become a fellow Kenickie Guitarist, and then St. Anthony's Girls' Catholic School between 1989 and 1994, where she and Nixon met Emma Jackson. Laverne went on to study at City of Sunderland College from 1994 to 1996.