Robert Barestrand was born on November 12, 1969 in Poland as Jacek Robert Baranowski, later changed to Jacek Robert Barestrand. Robert's family moved to Sweden and Stockholm in the 1970s from Poland, while Robert himself came here around 1980/81. In Stockholm it came to be that he lived independently from his parents already in his early teens. He subsequently learned to live life by himself, independent of parents and institutions according to the "hard school of life" as it is called.