Growing up performing on the northern beaches of Sydney, with a "hand me down" guitar, he spent his youth on surf trips up the coast playing around the campfire for his friends. He soon realised that his songs were a lot more inspirational than his skills on a surf- board. 1999 saw Hill spend the year wandering Europe and the US playing the clubs and bars of whichever city he happened to be in. The songs kept coming, acting as a canvas for the up and downs of experience and the cast of new people that he met. ‘Waterline’ paints a clear and compelling picture of where Hill’s been, where he is right now, but more importantly where he’s heading.

"I’d been writing a lot in Sydney and as part of bands and things like that" recalls Hill about the writing process for the album. "And I just had to get away at the time. So I suggested some people come with me, but nobody was quite up for it, so it was turning very much into a solo sojourn, so off I went with guitar in hand".

Having landed back in London town, he befriended a couple members of Natalie Imbruglia’s backing band. "I was hanging out with these guys in London" says Hill. "I was living with this Welsh guitarist, Peredur ap Gwynedd [who shares songwriting duties with Hill on several ‘Waterline’ tracks] and he assisted in some of the demos I had been doing. Later he brought in his mate Chuck Sabo who would come over and drop in a drum track or two. Later Peredur’s bass playing brother Rheinallt ap Gwynedd, who’s played with the likes of Richard Ashcroft, also came onboard".

‘Waterline’ was recorded in London under the watchful eye of producer Ian Grimble, who’s twiddled the knobs for such UK acts as the Manic Street Preachers and Travis. Grimble also utilized the original 1964 EMI mixing console that the Beatles had used when they worked at Abbey Road.

"Ian was working with another guy called Mike Hedges who’s well known in the production world" begins Hill on how the console came to be. "And they both had a studio together in France and both of them had come up through the ranks at Abbey Road as engineers. Anyway at one point this equipment came up for sale and they jumped on it. It’s a 1964 desk, it’s this big thing like an airline fader thing. The 2" tape machine was all made into a mobile unit for the Beatles, which ended up in John Lennon’s house where he started to develop his own studio. ‘Imagine’ was recorded on it and it was continued to be used by who ever came through Abbey Road".
As a producer how much influence did Grimble bring to the overall recording process? "Ian was fairly passive in a sense in that, he did see what was going on with the demos" explains Hill. "Then he took them to a higher level while still maintaining what we heard and what I was doing. He wasn’t bastardizing everything and drawing it towards him, which I could I imagine some producers would do. He did just sort of facilitate the flow of what was already going on. I chose him because of that reason and because he was in that genre that I liked and wrote in".

For Hill the process of songwriting is something that constantly needs nurturing, refining and expression. This disciplined approach has rewarded him with already a healthy catalogue of songs that will eventually see the light of day on future releases. "As far as in a lyrical sense, it’s pretty much a daily thing for me. There’s a real need for me to do it. I’m kind of just filling up little mini-discs as I go and every month or two, I look back and kind of got quite a lot of songs that I’ve been developing over time".

With ‘Waterline’, Hill is assured of a long and sustaining career in the industry. And from what I’ve heard of the album, Charlton Hill in time is likely to achieve, the same respect accorded to the likes of other great Australian singer/songwriters that came before him.