Being a rock star isn't as easy as it looks ? especially if you're the great white local hope for a record company in trouble. Just consider Watershed frontman Craig Hinds.

"Pressure's a terrible thing, man. It really is," he says, with just a hint of a sigh.

"But you've just got to come to terms with that. And I think the only way you do that is purely by thinking and forecasting."

Hence the title of his band's reflective fourth release, 'Staring at the Ceiling'.

"It's something that we want people to do more of," the singer elaborates. "It's about spending more time with yourself and spending more time dreaming and daring to dream."

Still, it's difficult to imagine Hinds himself has had much time to reflect ? apart from marrying his high school sweetheart, enduring five household floods and surviving the departure of three band members, he spent the first six months of 2008 in London and Sheffield working on the album.

That wasn't exactly a holiday either, remembers stalwart guitarist Nic Rush, rather breathlessly.

"I flew over to Heathrow, got off the plane, caught the Heathrow Express, caught the tube from Paddington to Kings Cross, got on a train, travelled three hours to Sheffield, walked from the station to the studio, opened my guitar case and started playing. And I had to nail four songs in one day.

"By the end of it, I was finished but it was a great experience."

Part of what made it so great was the opportunity to work with the likes of Elliot Kennedy who's twiddled the knobs for Bryan Adams.

"He's an incredibly well known producer and with us being all wide-eyed, we could have just sat back and said: 'Well just get on with it because you're supposed to make it happen'. But we didn't ? we really got involved and so we're really happy with the outcome of the entire album," explains Hinds.

He has reason to be: despite building on their familiar Coldplay-flavoured piano rock, the 13-track collection certainly pushes Watershed in new directions. And they have never sounded as confident ? or good, for that matter.

"The music sounds crisper and fresher, and when people put the album in their CD player, that's going to jump out at them," confirms Hinds.

Not as much as the actual songs, though.

"For us it's a really strong body of work, song wise," continues the singer. "I think that's what people are really going to pick up."

"Craig has definitely pulled a rabbit out of the hat as far as the songwriting on this album is concerned," seconds Rush.

"At the beginning of the year I was thinking: 'What is this going to be like? What could be bigger and better than what we already are?' And the way we approached recording this album and the songwriting, it's ended up being exactly what it needed to be."

So has the new band line-up.

Over half the group leaving ("It was a long time," explains Hinds. "We'd had a lot of success, coupled with guys I believe just wanted to move on and do their own thing.") created more of that ever-present pressure. But after months of auditioning new players, Rush and Hinds certainly aren't complaining.

"I think that this will be referred to as the classic Watershed line-up," says the guitarist. "Everybody brings something to the table musically and personality wise, and we can all compromise.

"We get on." Tellingly, he emphasises each word.

"We've learnt that you don't necessarily have to have the best players in the band ? performing is an hour of the day. You also have to have personalities that you can get on with, you have to be able to know you can live out of each others' pockets and go on a tour and get on. And we've got the best combination of those two things right now."

Hinds, the group's only constant, has the final word on the subject: "It's a long term thing, man. If it was one album or whatever, then you just get on with it. But this is a lifetime for us, so it's all important, it's ever changing."

What doesn't change for Hinds, though, is the thrill of taking new music to fans.

"I can't wait to sit down with an audience and play the new songs to them; to just see and feel their response. It's great, it's just the reward," he says, genuinely enthusiastic at the prospect.

"It's like them saying: 'Thank you for spending that amount of time and going through all that pressure for us'."