History

One Direction are a British-Irish boy band consisting of members Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. They signed to Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records after being formed and placing third in the seventh series of The X Factor. They later signed in North America to Columbia Records
In November 2011, One Direction released their debut album Up All Night, which became the fastest-selling debut album in the UK of 2011. In 2012, it debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, making One Direction the first UK group in history to debut at number one with their first album in the country. Up All Night spawned the Official UK Singles Chart top ten singles — "What Makes You Beautiful", "Gotta Be You", and "One Thing". In 2012, "What Makes You Beautiful" won the BRIT Award for Best British Single.
One Direction's world tour is set for 2013, with tickets grossing US$ 15.7 million for their Australian and New Zealand dates. One Direction has endorsements with Pokémon, Nokia, HarperCollins and Hasbro. In April 2012, One Direction's combined net worth was estimated at £10 million.

In 2010, Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan applied as solo candidates for the seventh series of The X Factor, but failed to qualify for the "Boys" category. After suggestion by guest judge Nicole Scherzinger, they were put together to form the five-piece boy band One Direction, thus qualifying for the "Groups" category. The newly formed boy band had five weeks to gel as a group before the next stage of the competition. The group got together for week-long practice sessions in Manchester in a bungalow at the bottom of Styles's stepfather's garden to get to know each other, and to practice. Malik said: "we didn't know what a harmony was. We all just sang in unison for two weeks." Payne agreed: "we just threw ideas around. The first few days were quite tough. We all had different ideas but we didn't really know what a group was about." Styles came up band name One Direction as he thought it would sound good when X Factor announcer Peter Dickson read their name out on the live shows. Tomlinson added: "Harry texted us to ask what we thought and it was one of those were we all just said, 'Yes' straight away. We all entered the competition with one thing in mind and that was to go to the top, so it worked. And it can be abbreviated to 1D.

MEMBERS :

Harry Styles - 01.02.1994 - Cheshire , England
Liam Payne - 29.08.1993 - Wolverhampton , England
Louis Tomlinson - 24.12.1993 - Duncaster , England
Niall Horan -  13.09.1993 - Westmeath , Ireland
Zayn Malik -  12.01.1993 -  Bradford , England