yeah in your controller have $state as a dependency and do something like:
$scope.current_state = null;
var set_current_state = function() {
var split = $state.current.name.split('.');
$scope.current_state = split[split.length - 1];
};
$rootScope.$on('$stateChangeSuccess', set_current_state);
set_current_state();
then in your template you can do something like:
<a class="tab-item" ng-class="{'active': tab.state_name === current_state}" ...>
you’ll have the active class when you’re on the right state (maybe you’ll have to tweak your state logic depending on how you use ui-router)
By default it’ll be brigther, icons will be inverted but you can add whatever you want to it!