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Formed in May 2005, the Ipswich band have built up a loyal fanbase locally due to their energetic live shows which are crammed full of catchy pop nuggets with a post punk twist. They can now hold gigs in most of their home town's venues and confidently expect to have people turned away on the door.

So the next logical step for bands in this position is to broaden their horizons, head out of Suffolk and hope to repeat the success across the country. But these things are never as easy as they sound, and it’s hard to point to a local band who has managed to pull off this feat.

But how will the members juggle their time in the band with their work life? "I'm the luckiest of the band as I'm self employed", says keyboard player Ben Groom, who like the rest of Rosalita has pledged to put the band ahead of work commitments.

"Everyone knows that the band comes first. We were due to play with another band in Norwich recently and they cancelled a gig because one of them had to go to a meeting at work. If you aspire to be in a band then the job you're doing shouldn't be that important, otherwise you should have other aspirations."

But fulfilling them is proving to be an expensive exercise for Rosalita, who learnt early on that there's often a big gap between outgoings and money made from playing gigs or selling music – likely to be a key reason why many bands remain in Suffolk.

It may be moving away from the romantic idea of living the dream, but Ben is realistic in his approach to how Rosalita operates financially: "It's hard. We're self funded and the Rosalita business loses money.

"But it's like any business - you have an initial investment but hopefully this will be followed by profits. Sometimes, if we just get money to cover our expenses we're happy."

Rosalita's extensive tour schedule will take them to places as far flung as Newcastle, Hartlepool, Brighton, Birmingham, Norwich and London – with several being revisited throughout the tour. Ben is hoping that making repeat visits to one place will prove to be a successful tactic in increasing popularity.

"We're heading north – going back to some of the places we've been before so we should have fans already. There’s no point going to somewhere like Manchester and then not going back for another year. The next step for us is returning to the same venue but headlining and filling the place. But it’s a big step up."

And following the trend set by breakthrough artists such as Lily Allen, Rosalita have found that getting gigs around the country is a lot easier than it was before the internet.

"It's difficult to get a tour together when you're unsigned but we've been touting for gigs through MySpace. We started by taking whatever we could and hoped that the gigs would fall into place. It’s good if a couple end up being on consecutive nights!"