By Breaking Celebrity News Staff

Are Lindsay Lohan and Max George getting serious?  It looked that way in NYC Friday night when the troubled starlet was caught in a major clinch with her Brit boy band beau.

The Liz & [expletive] star was backstage with the boys before their performance at the Z100 Jingle Ball concert, and was seen giving Max a long emotional hug.

She also joined the band in their Madison Square Garden dressing room, helping herself to some of their Kellogg's Pop-Tarts -- Pop-Tarts is a Z100 sponsor -- and later joined Max at his suite in the Dream Hotel.

"We can stay out of trouble and keep her out of trouble," Max told a Z100 DJ.

That may be the official un-party line but Max was a little more candid with E! News, confessing that Lohan "can party, like, nearly as hard as we can."

LiLo's career as a Max groupie began when she went to see him in concert in New York November 28, and ended up getting arrested early the next morning after allegedly punching a woman at a nightclub after-party.