One Direction star Liam Payne has spoken of the difficult day in which Zayn Malik announced he had left the chart-topping band.

Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam have said they will continue as a four-piece.

One Direction as a five piece
One Direction as a five-piece (John Shearer/Invision/AP, file)

And now Liam has told his 19.7 million Twitter followers of his “strange 24 hours” as the news broke.

Before Zayn had announced his decision to quit, 21-year-old singer Liam incurred the wrath of One Direction fans by covering up Zayn’s face on a poster during a photoshoot on the South East Asian leg of their tour.

Zayn had just flown home to the UK after dropping out of the 1D world tour due to “stress”.

Bandmate Harry Styles has also sent a simple message sending his love to his 24.1 million Twitter followers.

Harry was seen getting tearful at the band’s Jakarta concert on Wednesday evening, and needed a hug from Liam. Bandmate Louis Tomlinson also marked Zayn’s absence on stage, at one point pretending to put his arm around his absent pal.

Simon Cowell, who discovered the boyband on The X Factor, previously announced his support for Zayn, saying he has grown “very, very fond – and immensely proud – of him”.

He later tweeted his thanks to fans for their support, adding: “Sometimes strength is not defined by numbers.”

Meanwhile, Simon’s fellow X Factor judge Louis Walsh said he had heard rumours for a number of weeks that “everything wasn’t happy in paradise”.

He told Irish radio station RTE Radio One: “The problem with these guys is they’ve been in a bubble for the last five years, pressure, working, a lot harder than people think, so something had to give. So Zayn was the first person just to crack up a little bit.”

And the band were also offered words of comfort from a veteran of boyband break-ups, Take That’s Gary Barlow.

Gary Barlow
Gary Barlow (Anthony Devlin/PA)

Gary, who saw the disintegration of his own band in 1996 after Robbie Williams left – while Jason Orange also quit last year – tweeted his support.