The members of Gloriana have noticed an immediate impact from winning the Breakthrough Artist of the Year trophy at the most recent American Music Awards.

"You don't realizing how many people are watching those TV shows; you win an award and you start going places," the group's Mike Gossin tells Billboard.com. "It's funny now; going to airports, people recognize us a lot more -- everywhere we go, really. They're like, 'Oh, I saw you win that award.' It was one of the highlights for this band so far. Cross our fingers, hopefully we'll win a lot more."

Gloriana -- Gossin, his older brother Tom, Rachel Reinert and Cheyenne Kimball -- was already off to a good start even before the AMAs. Its self-titled debut album, released in August, reached No. 2 on the Hot Country Albums chart and No. 3 on the Billboard 200, while the single "Wild at Heart" was a Top 15 hit. The group's second single, "How Far Do You Wanna Go?," is currently climbing the charts.

The quartet is playing mostly its own shows this month before heading to Australia in February with Taylor Swift and then returning to the U.S. in March as support for Swift's Fearless Tour through May. Swift took Gloriana on the road in 2009 as well, and the group credits the year's top artist with an invaluable assist in its early success.

"It completely brought our band to an entirely new level," says Kimball. "We were just a brand new band. When she called us we were in a 15-passenger van, and we ended up being able to move into a tour bus and play in front of 14,000 to 20,000 people every show we had with her, which is kind of surreal. I feel like going out back out with her is gonna be amazing." Kimball says Swift often hangs out with Gloriana on the road and even bought the group a gnome for its bus.

Meanwhile, Gloriana and producer Matt Serletic -- who signed the group to his Emblem Records label -- are hatching plans for a sophomore album. Gossin says the group members "have been writing a ton within the last couple months, and we've got some amazing songs." And even though only one of the band's own songs appears on "Gloriana," he's hoping that "we'll have a lot bigger of a hand in the writing process on this next record."
 
But the group also hopes to release a third single from "Gloriana," so no timetable for the follow-up has been established yet. "We don't want to say anything for sure," Reinert notes. "We feel like this album still has life in it, so we have to keep pushing it and see how far it can go. But who knows; after the year we've had, I've learned to just kind of sit back and let everything happen as it should."