Lake first became recognized for his bootleg remixes of the Prodigy's "Climbatize", Leftfield's "Phat Planet", and Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams", which he did under the alias Cristophe D'Abuc in 2002. By 2006, "Changes", featuring Laura V, reached the UK Singles Chart , peaking at number 27. The track was licensed by Universal Music for a full worldwide release, where it then reached number 10 on Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay chart. His 2007 single, "Carry Me Away" (featuring Emma Hewitt), topped the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay Chart. In 2012, Lake received his first Grammy nomination for collaborating with deadmau5 on the album 4x4=12. He scored his third consecutive top ten hit on the US dance chart with "Only One". "If You Knew" featuring Nastala, became his 4th consecutive top 10 single on the US dance chart. In this time he also ran two record labels called Rising Music and Rising Trax, which took hiatus in 2014.

2015 saw a major direction change, Chris released 5 tracks on Ultra Records. The first was a single "Chest". NestHQ praised it: "It's not a frilly banger, it's not an esoteric deep cut. There's no sing-a-long happening here. Rather, Chris Lake has simplified his production to let all of the necessary elements shine". Following this was "Piano Hand", a collaboration with Chris Lorenzo, which was premiered on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show and on Billboard. Two months after, Lake's collaboration with Anna Lunoe, "Stomper" was released and premiered on YourEDM, where it was acknowledged as "a charging house tune that received play throughout the entire festival circuit". During September, "Stranger" was released and got played at nearly every major festival throughout the US, according to 1001tracklists. Coinciding with this September release was a 3-month North American tour where he played at a handful of notable festivals and venues such as Hard Day of the Dead, Foundation Nightclub, and U Street Music Hall. His last release of 2015 was another collaboration with Chris Lorenzo called "The Calling". Their second collaboration was premiered on Mixmag and they were hailed as a "seemingly perfect match". Alongside these 5 originals, he also released the remix of Calvin Harris & Disciple's "How Deep is Your Love", which had received over 80 million streams accumulative and was one of the most popular house remixes on SoundCloud of the year.

2016 saw Lake release a handful of very popular remixes, the first of which being Jess Glynne's "Hold My Hand", which received over 3 million streams across various platforms. Shortly after, his official remix for Craig David's "Nothing Like This" was released on FFRR Records and received a significant amount of DJ support throughout Europe. His most notable remix for that year was for Missy Elliot's "WTF (Where They From)".

In 2017, Lake released "Operator" and launched his own music label Black Book Records. Aside from his new label, he curated OWSLA's HOWSLA compilation with Skrillex, which was featured in Billboard[8] and reached number 1 on the iTunes electronic chart.The compilation consisted of 12 tracks, including Lake's release "I Want You", a widely-supported single on the club circuit.

On 29 January 2019, it was announced that Lake would be performing at the Indy 500 Snake Pit on 26 May 2019 along with Skrillex, Alesso and Illenium. Previous performers have included Axwell ^ Ingrosso, deadmau5, Diplo, GRiZ, Zedd, Marshmello, Martin Garrix, Steve Aoki, Kaskade, Hardwell, Dillon Francis and Zeds Dead.