The band's players -- bassist Bret Black (22), guitarist/vocalist Jeff Gray (24), drummer Christopher Short (20) and keyboardist Schuyler Johnson (21) -- are born-again Christians, but Black said they don't think of themselves as a Christian band playing Christian music.

"I guess you'd say we're Christian by faith, but not by genre," Black said. "We're not a praise band."

In recent years, several bands with Christian roots have made mainstream play lists -- Lifehouse, Switchfoot and P.O.D. among them -- without blatant evangelical themes. Yet the musicians' personal faith remains at the core.

"We can be in the secular music market but still hold true to what we believe," Black said. "At the end of the day it's who you are, not where you play." The band signed with Credential Recordings in 2006 and made the trek east to record their debut with the label.

The band pared down the 30 songs written in the three months prior to recording down to the 10 that you hear on their self-titled debut.  After working 18-hour days over a seven-week period, band and producer emerged with a grand freshman effort, rooted in classic piano-drive pop-rock – think Supertramp – and more modern guitar bands like Mew. Nowhere is that melding of piano and guitar more evident than on the lead single, “Just Glide.” As Gray’s vocals soar in the song, so does Skyler Johnson’s piano riff while the guitars fill out the space ideally. None of the instruments are anxious to take center stage on this project but neither are they lost in the shuffle as they perfectly glide along in songs like “Mute” and “Dreams.”

On July 20th, 2008 the band revealed their most recent project: 2 new songs recorded with producer Loren Israel (Jimmy Eat World, Plain White T's) and mixed by Mark Needham (The Killers "Hot Fuss"). Lost Ocean are finishing their next album, fictitiously titled "Could This Be Love," and are preparing for a late-June 2009 release.