I never get the Coldplay / Radiohead comparisons. Musically they're so totally different, and I think one of the reasons that Radiohead has such a devoted base of fans is that they're going musically in directions that few other musical acts are willing to follow. It's unquestionably an effort to be musical visionaries. Whether they're successful or not is a matter of opinion, and that's why they come of as pretentious to some critics.
Coldplay's sound, on the other hand, is somewhat derivative, but I see them being more derivative of Travis and other songwriting-driven brit pop outfits. Coldplay's vision is to write great pop songs, (again, a matter of opinion as to whether they're successful or not). And I don't mean it as a slight that their sound is derivative. They're like the Brit Pop equivalent of a country band: you don't go into country music to break new musical territory, but you can still aspire to write the perfect country song. That pursuit of writing a great song without really testing the bounds of the genre is a perfectly acceptable goal.
That said, Coldplay would be pretty far down the list of bands I listen to, even amongst sort of airy and uplifting british pop music: the aforementioned Travis or The Engineers would certainly be above them on the list.
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