By 2008 he was hyped and labelled as the "Number 1 Unsigned UK Artist" on MySpace and had amassed 11 million song plays.

Inspired by artists such as Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, and Bryan Adams, Brooks threw himself into music and started to practice singing and composing songs.

[5] During the recording of Maybe Tomorrow Brooks began gaining popularity through his Myspace page, which led to interest from other managers and labels.

[2][14] After graduating from Barton Peveril, Brooks attended the University of Bath to focus on a degree in Sports Development and Coach Education.

While attending college for his Coaching degree, Brooks began to express interest in travelling to America and playing shows there.

[15] In September 2006, Brooks travelled to America for the first time to tour small venues around California and Nevada and make contacts with people in the music business.

In 2008, he was declared the "Number 1 Unsigned Artist" in the UK on the site and held the title for a year[2][8] while amassing 11 million song plays and 100,000 profile friends, although there is no official evidence for these figures.

Production and recording for the album took place in Los Angeles and Stockholm, Sweden, with a handful of producers and used material that Brooks had been working on for the past few years.

[8] The "Superman" music video was filmed on 27 May 2010 and featured Giglianne Braga[23] as the female lead, who was currently on the "If I Can Dream" reality show.

Tracks from the album saw commercial use, with "These Broken Hands of Mine" being featured on the show Grey's Anatomy[27] and "Superman" on the movie Step Up 3D.

[30] Brooks attracted enough international fans from Asia and was able to sign with Sony in Korea and Malaysia who licensed his A Reason to Swim for release there.

[31] To coincide with a media tour of Asia, Brooks ran a charity marathon to raise funds for a mission trip to China.

Afterward, he attended a media tour in Korea to support A Reason To Swim,[32] appearing on national television and Korean publications of Nylon and Teen Vogue.

While on his tour of the United States, Brooks made and sold a select number of limited edition CDs named The Mixtape.

The band ran out of copies of A Reason To Swim in the middle of the tour, so until the new shipment arrived they sold these special edition CDs.

The Mixtape included a mixture of songs from A Reason to Swim and Constellation Me, as well as a recorded cover of Hallelujah that is not available on iTunes.

[5] This charity work includes the Invisible Children Organization,[33] going to Africa with his father when he was 19 for Habitat For Humanity[9][25] and then to China in 2011 with the Bring Me Hope Foundation.