To run with lxc-cli do the following.

$ lxcdir=/var/lib/lxc
$ name="cirros"
$ arch="amd64"
$ tarball="cirros-0.3.0-$arch-lxc.tar.gz"
$ dir="$lxcdir/$name"
$ sudo mkdir -p "$dir"
$ cat <<EOF | sudo sh -c "cat >'$dir/config'"
lxc.network.type=veth
lxc.network.link=virbr0
lxc.network.flags=up
lxc.utsname=$name
lxc.tty = 4
lxc.pts = 1024
lxc.rootfs = $dir/rootfs
lxc.mount = $dir/fstab
lxc.arch = $arch
EOF

$ cat <<EOF | sudo sh -c "cat > '$dir/fstab'"
proc  $dir/rootfs/proc proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
sysfs $dir/rootfs/sys  sysfs   defaults  0 0
EOF

$ sudo rm -Rf "$dir/rootfs" && sudo mkdir $dir/rootfs && \
  ( cd $dir && sudo tar -Sxvzf - ) < $tarball

$ echo "IS_NOCLOUD=1" | sudo tee "$dir/rootfs/var/lib/cloud/config.local.sh"
$ lxc -n "$name" start