No Doubt never intended their break to be as long as it was.

The "Hey Baby" hitmakers - made up of Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal, Adrian Young and Tom Dumont - have just released their first new album for 11 years, Push and Shove, and they admit when they first decided to go on hiatus in 2004 they never realized it would take so many years to get back together.

During an appearance on UK TV show This Morning, Gwen said, "We actually never were apart [as friends], I mean, we always planned to do another record."

Adrian revealed, "There was a pause. I mean we had talked about making another record, but we just didn't know how long it was going to take in between... What people don't really realize is that we saw each other quite often, but we all started having families. So there were a few years off and then we got back together and worked on the record."

Gwen - who enjoyed a successful solo career during her break from No Doubt - is proud she is part of a band that has survived more than two decades in the music business, and she thinks the time out they took was necessary: "It's not work it's really fun, but I think we got a little burned out after Rock Steady and we said lets take a little break. Which we needed."

In 2008, after Gwen returned home from an intense 106-date tour, the band was due to begin writing the new record. However, she fell pregnant for the second time with her son Zuma, now four, which delayed the LP. Tony, 42, insists the fact that the band now all have young families has had a positive effect on them all and made the dynamic of the band more tranquil. "In some ways when we were younger everything was so intense and all the little things were so important. Now that we have kids and our priorities changed a little bit we're a lot easier with each other and the small things have kind of faded away," he said.

Gwen also has a six-year-old son, Kingston, with her husband Gavin Rossdale.