TORONTO -- "People here are like, 'So, who are you?' It's great!"

Atomic Kitten's Jenny Frost is laughing. She and her groupmates, Liz McClarnon and Natasha Hamilton, did a lot of that during our interview at a downtown Toronto hotel yesterday.

Still, in light of the Liverpudlian trio's first-ever forray into North America, the question stands.

So: Atomic Kitten are a pop sensation in the U.K., Europe, Asia, and Australia. They scored a stream of hit singles overseas before notching up a No. 1 album in Britain with last year's Right Now, which is set for Canadian release through Virgin Music next month. Just in time for their Toronto visit, their song Whole Again is now climbing ivy-like up local radio station playlists.

The expression "another Spice Girls" is on more than a few pairs of industry lips.

They have heard it before.

"They were the biggest girl band ever, and obviously very rich, so we don't mind being compared," said McClarnon.

Added Frost: "Without being derogatory, I think our music's a bit more credible and crosses over to a bigger audience -- younger as well as older. The Spice Girls were five characters, almost like cartoons. They had to live that. We're not walking around going, 'Okay, I'm going to be the real gobby one, you're going to be the cute one...'"

Frost, 23, is the gregarious joker of the group. Hamilton, 19, is the youngest and most talkative member, seemingly able to quote sales figures and stats from memory. McClarnon, 20, is pensive and the Kitten most likely to be named "the quiet one."

Affable, plain-spoken, and apparently unaffected by their European success, the three describe themselves "girls-next-door from Liverpool."

"We're not walking around pretending to be something we're not," said Frost. "There's this whole thing in America about how you mustn't have boyfriends -- we've all got boyfriends and we're not saying we haven't. We're doing what any girls our age in our situation would be doing: Having the time of our lives."

Atomic Kitten was put together in 1999 by songwriter and manager Andy McCluskey, formerly of '80s hitmakers OMD, who recruited original singer Kerry Katona, McClarnon, and, later, Hamilton.

In what was big news in the U.K., Katona was replaced by Frost a year ago when she left to start a family with Bryan McFadden, of the Irish boy-band Westlife. McClarnon admited she thought the group were done for. But the original member's departure became something of an afterthought when Right Now topped the charts, displacing U2, OutKast, and Destiny's Child among others.

"We were up against the biggest singers in the world, and that gave us a big boost in confidence," Hamilton said.

It was enough for Bono to remark that Atomic Kitten had "bitten the arse out of rock."

"We went to the NME Awards, and I wore a T-shirt saying, 'U2: Just another Irish boy-band?' Bono shows up and I'm thinking, 'I shouldn'a wore this.' Jenny ran up to Bono and told him to look at my T-shirt. I was covering it but he grabbed me arms! He said, 'That's f---ing wicked!'"