Lucas Silveira is the lead singer and creator of the indie Canadian rock band The Cliks and also happens to be a trans man.

Prior to Lucas’ life-changing decision to come out, Art Silveira, his cousin whom he grew up with, remembers Lucas was easy to get upset as a child. “When [I saw] him wearing a girl’s shirt,” he says, “it just didn’t look right on him…you can tell when someone’s comfortable in their skin and he just never was.”

Lucas explains his growing comfort in himself as something that came in stages mainly when he first came out as a trans man. “It was me being more visible, and the more visible I felt the more confident I felt.” It was at this point that he had only undergone top surgery without hormones for fear of the uncertainty of how the hormones could affect his voice.

In 2009, Lucas made the decision to take testosterone because, even after his top surgery, he felt that he still didn’t look or sound the way he felt. After transitioning physically with testosterone, he says he became the most confident. “There’s so much that you gain in just facing your truth and when you face your truth, you own it, [even though] you might be scared,” he says. “Confidence doesn’t come without being scared. It comes with being scared and doing it anyway.”

The emotional process—“Transitioning is forever”

Other than his voice being a concern for him during his transition, Lucas wasn’t prepared for the intense emotional process during his transition and “dealing with people’s perceptions of me,” he says. He noticed that some people would treat him like a completely different person just because he looked different and “because of that, it’s changed me and I’ve had to change because of it, and it’s a difficult part.”

Lucas was also worried about how his fans would react considering that a majority of his fan base is female. They identified with him as a female and “having to confront their loss around the way I looked and the way I sounded.”

Unfortunately, Lucas still has to deal with people who have “old-fashioned” views of gender. “There are things that I’ve learned that you can’t control about your audience.”

While he admits their perceptions can hurt, he tells others it’s best to just let them go and move on and considers it all part of the growing process. For Lucas, he believes that in order to become a confident person, you have to “accept things that are happening around you and the changes that are happening around you.” He suggests paying attention to your surroundings and becoming self-aware before you blame yourself for anything.

“Most people have different narratives than me and each other,” he says. “One [thing] that I find is a commonality that is not talked about is the emotional process of transitioning and the loss that you have to deal with.” People have told Lucas that he’s gaining male privilege as a trans man, but Lucas feels that there’s unnecessary guilt around it “because for most trans guys, it’s not there and male privilege is something that needs to be deconstructed with people because it’s not the same for everybody.”

Eventually, he decided that his true fans would stick with him and he had to do what was right for him. “My advice is: be who you are, be true to who you are and be nice to people, and if they’re not nice to you just let them go.”

Find your own family

When Lucas first came out to his family, he received criticism from some of the older members. However, some members were completely supportive of him. His cousin Art, in particular, has always encouraged Lucas and always thought of his coming out as “a veil [being] lifted. It’s like, ‘That’s him.’”

For trans men and women who are also facing a lack of familial support, Lucas’ advice to you is “find your own family. Find your chosen family and find friends and community that will support you because they are out there.”

“You can become very emotionally intense at times and you need to have people there to hold you up sometimes. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in places that you never thought you’d ask for help,” he says, recommending community centres and support groups.

The voice

When asked what the most satisfying aspect of his transition was, Lucas said it was his voice, “100 per cent, and that’s the most gratifying thing that I could have ever had.”

His cousin Art describes his voice as revealing his true self, as being more soulful and from the heart. “Now it’s like he’s a completely different person in the sense that you see the person that has always kind of been there but he never let himself fully go.”

And Lucas agrees. “That’s how I feel about it myself,” he says. “I always tell people I never, ever listen to my old music—I cannot deal with it; I cannot hear it. And now, this is the first record that I’ve had where I actually listen to it regularly to dissect it, to hear it, to diagnose what I’ve done.” He says he can listen to his music and be proud. “‘That is me’ and I hear me.”

Other than a solo album, Black Tie Elevator is Lucas’ first recorded album with his new voice. In an interview with Huffington Post, Lucas describes the album as “’typical dude, moves somewhere, meets a girl, gets his heart broken, and writes a bunch of good songs.’”

The inspiration behind the album comes from his experiences living in Brooklyn, New York where he soon fell in love with a woman “and it was a bit of a chasing game, a bit of unrequited love for a while, and then she came around and then promptly broke my heart.”

“A lot of the album is written around unrequited love and coming to know myself all over again and the fall-down of feeling like I’ve finally hit a place in my life where, I felt, I could be who I was,” he says. He continues to say that he discovered that love is never simple, which is likely why his music likes to explore that topic. “It’s one of the most complex emotions in the world and it’s what I thrive on.”

For Lucas, a majority of his inspiration behind his lyrics is his personal experiences around love and loss. “Either feeling happy in it, or feeling miserable in it, or trying to understand it.” In particular, the song “1000 Violins” is about Skye, Lucas’ fiancée.

After all his self-discovery and struggle, Lucas is solid in his chosen path. “Almost every penny I make I put back into my career. The whole goal is that one day, we’ll come out of that and I hope that this is going to be the record that’s going to do that. There’s always a hope.”

“You have to believe in yourself to keep putting money into yourself and you are your own investment,” he says. “Never doubt who you are, just pursue it.”

The album is available for upload online on April 23, 2013 and will be physically available for sale on their website and at shows.