Reopen xchat after it has been closed to the system tray

When I close xchat to the system tray, it is leaving IRC connections to servers and consequent channels open and the process running. However, when the program is reopened from the system tray, it generates new processes, as if none were open and the program being run initially. Is there any way to reinstate a program that has been closed to the system tray but has lost its links to the GUI? The pid is visible in the terminal. I was wondering if there is any way to achieve this from gnome desktop on a Debian based system.