One Direction Members' Quotes About Their Time in the Boyband

The former One Direction boys have publicly reflected on their days as part of the boyband since going on hiatus in 2015.

Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik were put together on the X Factor in 2010, and went on to become the world’s biggest boyband. While they had some ups and downs over the years, all five members have remembered their time in the group pretty positively.

“I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” Harry, for one, told Vogue in November 2020. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in … I think that’s probably why I like traveling now — soaking stuff up.”

While the other boys have echoed his sentiments in various interviews, some of them have gotten more honest about dealing with the die-hard fans and the dark parts of fame.

“I struggled with the idea of, ‘Why won’t you just let us out?'” Niall recalled during a March 2021 appearance on the “People, Just People” podcast, noting that fans would be “banging on car windows.”

He continued, “But, you can’t get inside the brain of a fan, and now I completely get it, but at the time, you’re like, ‘You’re our age. Just let us out.'”

While Niall’s issues came with the constant barrage of fans following them from city to city, Liam, on the other hand, said he hit “rock bottom” during his 1D days while coping with the pressure of being famous.

“At a certain point, I just thought ‘Well, I’m going to have a party for one,’ and that just seemed to carry on throughout many years of my life. And then you look back at how long you’ve been drinking and it’s ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a long time,’ even for someone who was as young as I was,” he said on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast in June 2021. “It was wild, but it was the only way you could get the frustration out in the day.”

Over the years, the “Strip That Down” singer has been vocal about his alcohol and mental health struggles. “I went into therapy a couple years after [the band ended]. I kind of went off the rails a little bit and just couldn’t really figure out what was making me sad,” Liam told British GQ in November 2019. “It was just such a strange course through life, and then when the switch turns off you’re left to your own devices. I was drinking too much and getting into really bad, bad situations for quite some time actually.”

Although he went through some difficult times in the past, Liam has so much love for the group. In fact, he’s pushing for 1D to get back together for a potential reunion. “I think we just need a proper catch up actually,” he explained while chatting with CapitalFM in December 2020. “It was nice to catch up for the 10-year anniversary. I’m hoping we’ve got a lot more to come from us.”

Scroll through our gallery to see what the boys have said about their One Direction days over the years.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Youth Crisis Hotline at 1-800-448-4663.

Love J-14? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for fun, exclusive videos with your favorite stars.

Not a Fan of the Music

“That’s not music I would listen to. … Would you listen to One Direction at a party with your girl? I wouldn’t. To me, that’s not an insult, that’s me as a 22-year-old man,” Zayn said during an interview with Rolling Stone in November 2015. “As much as I was in that band, and I loved everything that we did, that’s not music that I would listen to. I want to make music that I think is cool s–t. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”

Loving the Band

“When somebody gets out of a band, they go, ‘That wasn’t me. I was held back.’ But it was me. And I don’t feel like I was held back at all,” Harry told Rolling Stone in August 2019. “It was so much fun. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not like I was tied to a radiator.”

Letting Go of the Pressure

“It was a little bit dark and twisted towards the end of it, but the last few shows were really beautiful moments because the pressure cooker had been let off,” Liam told The Guardian in December 2019. “It was almost like counting down to holiday — we were going to wake up that Monday morning with no schedule.”

In Control

“We rose to fame pretty quick, and because of that, we had some power and some say within the record label and with management,” Louis said while talking with The Independent in January 2020. “[It was] like a drug. It’s that feeling of heightened emotion and every day being manically busy, and the hysteria. Although you might complain about it, none of us said, ‘No we don’t wanna do that.’ We were just in it. We were f–king loving it.”

Dealing With Struggles

“The day the band ended, I was like, ‘Thank the Lord,'” Liam recalled on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast in June 2021. “I know a lot of people are going to be mad at me for saying that, but I needed to stop or it would kill me.” He explained that his mental health issues at the time were “really, really, really severe.”

“It was a problem,” Liam added. “And it was only until I saw myself after that I was like, ‘Right, I need to fix myself.’”

Having Respect for the Boys

“I feel really lucky that we always had each other to be this unit that felt like you could keep each other in check and you could just have someone else who gets it. Because it’s impossible to not, at times I think everyone experiences this, feel like, ‘Oh, everyone else is on the other side of the glass and I’m on this side of the glass, and no one really gets it,'” he told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 in May 2022. “And I think having that is kind of priceless. I think there is very much a respect between all of us, if we did something together. And that is something that you can’t really undo. And you know, it’s like a very deep love for each other, I think.”