A stacked pike of glass ashtrays shudder, then topple off the bar, clattering all over the floor of downtown Toronto sweatbox, Ultrasound. Victimized by a sonic boom triggered by local grunge rockers Our Lady Peace as they run through an ear-bleeding soundcheck.

"Did we do that!" asks guitarist Mike Turner, staring down at the carnage. "I guess that qualifies us as rock gods," he laughs.

With both 'Starseed' (off their debut Naveed album) and 'Needle And The Damage Done' (their contribution to the Borrowed Tunes Neil Young tribute disc) receiving heavy national airplay, the narrow dimensions of Ultrasound seem ridiculously confining for a band of Our Lady Peace's velocity. However, members Turner, vocalist Raine Maida, bassist Chris Eacrett and drummer Jeremy Taggart couldn't be happier. As they would prove later that night, the claustrophobic crush and sweat of a packed club is the ideal launching pad for a band obviously set on winning over their own audience. "There was a lot of media-generated hype about us when Naveed came out, but I don't mind saying we're green as hell and we're not really ready for that stuff yet," explains 23-year old Maida, gingerly favouring his three-times operated-upon knee, as he and Turner take time out from rehearsals for a spell of self-promotion. "We're still a very young band and we want to develop in stages. When we opened for I Mother Earth, I'm on a big stage, big lights, with an audience so far away and I felt disconnected. I prefer this situation (at Ultrasound) where the audience is right in your face."

"Yeah, we like to blur the line between them and us," says Turner, picking up the conversation. "We see the crowd as a bigger us. There's four of us playing instruments, but that doesn't make the audience any less part of the show. It's like a communal free-for-all."

Our Lady Peace was formed two and a half years ago by Turner -- an ex-patriot Brit from Yorkshire -- and Maida, a criminology student at the University of Toronto. When their original group refused to get serious, Maida and Turner decided it was time to find more committed bandmates. "When you throw away a university education at the U. of T., you'd better be committed," laughs Maida, who says his father still wants to know what courses he's taking this fall.

In recruiting Eacrett and Taggart, Turner and Maida were looking for musicians who could challenge them and create new ideas rather than fitting into a preconceived direction. With Taggart (who was 17 at the time), they got a jazz-trained drummer whose complex time signatures added a sense of sophistication to the arrangements -- balanced by Eacrett's heavy metal bass influences. "They'd come up with something together and I'm thinking, where do I fit into this," laughs Turner. "Then by the time the music had taken its final form, Raine is thinking, 'and I've got to sing on top of this.' But it's that diversity which made things work. There were always surprises. Nothing ever went in the direction you'd think it would go -- so everything was always a challenge."

Limited finances made for limited studio options, so the foursome found themselves at Arnold Lanni's Arnyard Studios in the northern Toronto suburb of Weston, with just enough coin to record a three-song demo. "We didn't have enough money for an indie release so we wanted the three songs to be as close to our sound as our budget would allow," explained Turner. Lanni, a noted producer, musician and songwriter with Frozen Ghost and Sheriff, kept check on the sessions, dropping in occasionally to "give us a pat on the back or a kick in the butt," cracked Turner. Lanni tipped off his brother Robert (head of Coalition Entertainment Group) who saw enough potential to shop a copy of the tape to Sony president Rick Camilleri, whose reaction was immediately positive.

"We sent demos out but we really didn't expect anything. All we wanted to do was continue working together," said Maida. "Next thing we know, we're getting calls from Geffen and Interscope in the States. It was all very exciting." An offer by Sony's Camilleri "to make me a record that sounds like your demo" -- with no outside interference -- was the most appealing invitation. Our Lady Peace elected to return to Arnyard, with Lanni hired as full-time producer. "We were signed on faith that we could come up with more material like the demos but there was so much emotion and adrenalin flowing amongst us, I think we had ten more songs written inside a couple of weeks," allowed Maida.

It was Lanni's patience and understanding which transformed a series of raw ideas into the polished arrangements which constitute Naveed. Never one to dominate the sessions or take a heavy-handed approach, Lanni threw the timeclock out of the window and allowed his neophyte charges to learn by trial and error. "He'd let us toll for eight hours rather than solve the problem himself," noted Maida. "He'd let us work it out ourselves when the fixed reality is to say, 'don't let us do it. Stop us right now!'"

Like the band's name, which originates from a 1943 poem by American Mark Van Doren -- whose message espouses the philosophy that life is about the pursuit of ultimate goals, and not the goal itself -- Our Lady Peace project an aura of mysticism in both the music and lyrical content of Naveed. It's not that the band are heavy disciples of eastern cultures; more a healthy respect for the cultural sanctity of eastern music which has allowed certain aspects to seep into their own sound. Maida says he's a great admirer of WOMAD artist Sheila Chandra and feels the melding of western and eastern cultures -- as practiced by the likes of Peter Gabriel can only enhance music as a spiritual therapy. Naveed itself comes form a Middle Eastern name for 'bearer of good news' and embodies the idea of an on-going quest for knowledge. Musically, any eastern spirituality in OLP's music is derived, according to Turner, "from Jeremy's hippy parents who think The Tibetan Book Of The Dead is a damned good read!"

Lyrically, Maida admits the songs contain a lot of heavy narrative ('The Birdman', 'Under Zenith' and the spiritual trilogy of 'Starseed', 'Hope' and 'Naveed') and says the material has to be challenging enough for him to retain an interest in performing them long term. "I'm the one who has to sing these songs and if it ends up being 300 nights a year, they'd better have a powerful effect on my life. Otherwise, they'll end up feeling stale."

It's a philosophy Our Lady Peace practice as well as preach. When asked to contribute a song to the Neil Young Borrowed Tunes tribute, they elected to re-arrange Young's acoustic ode to the peril of heroin addiction 'The Needle And The Damage Done' into a blistering hard rocker while still retaining the song's mournful sentiment. So strong is the result that their cover is now competing for airtime against 'Starseed' and has become a highlight of their live performance. "It's pointless to take a Neil Young song and reproduce it, because you won't even come close," allows Maida. "So we changed the arrangement to accommodate how we would play the song. I was also attracted to the song's timeless message. It still has as much weight today as when he originally wrote it."

Like Crash Test Dummies, Barenaked Ladies, Moist, Tea Party and tour mates I Mother Earth, Our Lady Peace is part of a new breed of Canadian artists. Groups who are setting new rules rather than conforming to existing standards. Their music is aggressive and uncompromising, and -- like their Seattle counterparts -- is based on a stance that they'd rather build their own audience over a period of time than jump on the corporate bandwagon.

A position the 120 fans, shoehorned into the sweaty confines of Ultrasound, support wholeheartedly -- even if stepping on shards of shattered ashtrays becomes an occupational hazard.