"The truth of it is, you can think one thing about a situation and the total opposite can happen," he said. "I had every intention of remaining friends with everybody, but I guess certain phone numbers have changed and I haven't received calls from a lot of people. I've reached out to a few of them and not got a reply. Certain people have pride issues, but it's stuff you overcome in time."

Perhaps their silence has something to do with Malik's increasing vocality about how creatively restricted he felt while in 1D. In December 2015, he spoke with Fader about how the band's pop formula eventually began to grate on him.