Daryl Braithwaite and his twin brother, Glenn, were born on 11 January 1949 and raised in a working class family in Melbourne. His father, a plumber, worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme in the mid-1950s. Braithwaite attended Punt Road Primary School in South Yarra, then Christ Church Grammar, where the twins sang in the school choir. He later said, "I will always recall the horror of my first solo in the choir singing 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' when the choir master, Leonard Fullard, gave me a note and then suddenly I was on my own. It was terrifying." In 1961 Braithwaite was in the same class as Olivia Newton-John.