Big Wreck just might be the biggest new Toronto band from Boston. Or something like that.

Whatever the case, this Beantown-based rock quartet, led by Torontonian Ian Thornley, is definitely big stuff: Big guitars, big drums, big record deal, and now, thanks to The Oaf, lead single from their debut album In Loving Memory Of..., big sales.

And, as he preps for tonight's show at Lee's Palace, Big Wreck's first headlining gig since rolling into Canada's Top Ten, is showing big ambition.

"My main concern is that we can set ourselves apart from whatever else is out there," Thornley says.

"If that means I don't sell as many records, that's fine. I'm not really that concerned about selling records. I don't want to be known for just a song or an album. I don't want it to be, 'What was the band that did that song?'

"There are real rock bands with a deep rooted sense of integrity, and that's what we aspire to."

Big Wreck have had no shortage of practice. Some three years in the making, In Loving Memory Of... marks the group's transformation from music academy rebels into a fully formed rock outfit.

Thornley, now 25, first met his cohorts -- guitarist Brian Doherty, bassist David Henning and drummer Forrest Williams -- while studying jazz at Boston's esteemed Berklee College Of Music. However, the group preferred all-night jam sessions to class.

The singer is quick to distance Big Wreck from their academic training. As Thornley puts it, school was "just a holding tank" until he figured out what to do.

"I look at it as a hindrance in a lot of ways," he says. "Most of my favorite musicians are self-taught. I think I enjoyed sitting down and playing more when I wasn't trained.

"That's why every song on the album is in a different tuning. It's that sense of discovery. The real beauty of music comes when your brain is not really involved. You just start playing and get lost in it, and you can move aside and become a spectator. The essence of it is easier to attain when your brain is not in the way."

Still, someone used his brains to turn Big Wreck into big rock.

"There was always an urge to get an album out sooner," Thornley says. "I'm a very impatient person; I'm just blessed with good management that I trust implicitly.

"The other guys are a little more patient than me. I wanted to sign right away, even if it was just a development deal. I figured they'd realize how good we were, when in fact we'd just be put on a shelf. I now figure there's a reason we weren't signed earlier: We weren't that good yet."

Before inking a deal with Warner in 1996, Thornley, a self-confessed non-singer until just before the recording of In Loving Memory, waited out the pangs of restlessness and premature major label offers by touring incessantly, working on his bluesy yowl and soaking in his influences, which included everything from Led Zeppelin to The Smiths to Jimmy Rogers to Ry Cooder.

"Let's face it," he says. "No one's going to push the guitar envelope any further than it's already gone. But we don't borrow so much as we learn.

"Ideas are out there." He points to an imaginary orbit around him. "It's just a matter of tapping into that."

As for the band's early accomplishment, Thornley is uncharacteristically reserved.

"I wouldn't say we're ahead of the game," he says. "We're just further down the line in searching for what we want to get. You never really get there. And, if you do put out an album that you think really crystalizes who you are, you've stopped growing. What happens to you in six months?"