ROCK SOLID The Cliks are in top form.

It’s rare to have your new band championed by one of your musical heroes, let alone two. But that’s exactly what happened for the Cliks—representing just a couple of highlights in a truly amazing year.

“I had just met Cyndi Lauper before going onstage, and I was giddy,” recalls Lucas Silveira, the lead singer and guitarist in the Toronto rock quartet that hits Knitting Factory this week. The Cliks were playing an early show in the Lauper-organized True Colors tour last summer in Salt Lake City, and were not scheduled to continue on with the others. But then, Silveira continues, “When we got offstage, Cyndi goes, ‘You guys fuckin’ rock! I’m going to see what I can do about getting you on the rest of the tour!’ ” She got them booked, of course—and not only for that tour but for the entire True Colors 2008 as well.

Then Ian Astbury of the Cult became smitten with the Cliks’ sound and invited them to join his band for part of a tour that kicks off later this month. “I am a huge Cult fan,” Silveira gushes. “I was like, I must have a horseshoe up my ass!”

Add to that the band’s myriad high points of 2007: Its April-released Snakehouse received stellar reviews, their “Complicated” video was added into regular rotation on MTVU, tattoo-crazy Silveira was invited to make an appearance (and get a new tat) on the reality show LA Ink and, just last month, it was announced that the Cliks had been nominated for a GLAAD Artist of the Year award alongside the likes of Melissa Etheridge and Rufus Wainwright.

Getting here, though, has not been a cinch for the Cliks—at least for Silveira, who started the band in 2004 as Lilia, a young woman. At the time, Silveira was in the midst of an identity crisis, struggling with the realization that he was not gay, but trans. Coming out was a process that seemed to sneak up on him.

“I think the human mind subconsciously moves you toward happiness,” he says. After years of playing “acoustic, hippie, sitting-in-the-basement-smoking-doobage music,” Silveira found his true sound in rock. “I kept doing various things and saying, ‘Yes! This is who I am!’ And at the end, I said, ‘Oh yeah, and I’m trans.’ ”

Still, the singer has made the difficult decision to not take testosterone for fear that it would change or even damage his voice. “I do go back to the idea once in a while—usually when I’m in the midst of absolute frustration after being called ‘she.’ But I know who I am, and that’s probably the most difficult part of not taking T, of not having the world see me for who I am.”

Silveira wrote much of the content for Snakehouse—seething tales of betrayal and alienation—while both coming out and dealing with the breakup of a seven-year relationship. Much of that coming out was done publicly, in the mainstream press, though the portrayal was always positive. “I think all the attention has kind of helped me, to tell you the truth,” Silveira says, “because people are so willing to accept something, even if they don’t understand it.”

Unfortunately, the only negative press Silveira’s received actually came from LGBT corners: a gay male interviewer asking Silveira if he thought he played guitar better now that he was a man, and a writer in Paris writing a story about how the band members were denying their lesbian selves.

“A lot of places want to pigeonhole you into being totally lesbian,” says guitarist Nina Martinez. “But I identify as queer because it remains an open situation for me.”

Mainly, though, its largely LGBT fan base has embraced the band—sometimes literally, as Cliks lover Margaret Cho grabbed Silveira after a True Colors set last June and made out with him onstage in front of a stadium full of thrilled viewers. “It was more of a shock than anything,” he says with a laugh.

Perhaps the year’s best news, though, has been the coming together of a set of bandmates who seem to be sticking around. After much musician turnover (only two of the members on the Snakehouse album are still on board), the current foursome seems here to stay.

“Bassist Jen Benton and I are the newest members, and we had to go through this whole year to bond,” says Martinez, whom Silveira plucked from a favorite Toronto band, Dance Yourself to Death. “Lucas was the visionary; he wrote the songs. But now I feel we’ve really become a band. And the biggest, most exciting thing is discovering each other creatively.”

The Cliks play the Knitting Factory Tue 12.