But their gigging workload is paying off.

With a new sticks man on board, Craine impressed Halo Records enough to land a deal and on Monday release their first single, End Of The Line.

It comes two years after the band formed. "The plan is to do it once and do it right," says guitarist Chris Roberts.

"We wanted to cement a fanbase in South Yorkshire and build from there.

"As we are not some sort of cult, dare I say, NME band, we realised we would never get industry coverage without regular London gigs.

"Once we did we got label interest and it was a case of figuring out who genuinely believed in us and those whose deal looked good on paper but in reality were gonna rip us off."

Previous winners of our 2006 Star Idol competition, the quintet continued to stoke the fire at grass roots level – including supports for Rooster, The Departure and One Night Only – and grow songs for Sleeping Vixen, the album they record soon for autumn release.

The single was written by keyboard player Scott Ford. "He was going through a pretty dark time in his life where he was basically living in his car and a lot of the descriptions are things he's seen through his windscreen," says Chris, who is hoping he, Scott, singer Steve Craine, bassist Dan Roberts and drummer Tom Stebbing make the top 75 singles chart.

"At the back of our minds we know it's good enough to chart – we just hope enough of the public will too. After that we are doing the last few songs on Sleeping Vixen. We want to make a record we look back at in 10 years and still think of as an achievement.

"We never started being deliberately anything. We had two songwriters, me and Scott, who brought songs to the table and they were thrown into the melting pot, jamming them as a band."

End Of The Line emerges via the major download traders and is accompanied by a promo video shot at an old warehouse in London's Docklands.

"It was surreal with the mass of film crews, make up artists etc and even though we were all knackered cos it was a 22-hour shoot it was such a buzz – and then seeing how professional it turned out just blew us away."

Craine play a free launch gig at Carling Academy on June 27 as a thank you to fans. "Aside from that we also want people who haven't seen us live to check us out – if they like it great, but if not it won't have cost 'em owt."


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