Harry Styles revealed his initial reaction and thoughts on Zayn Malik leaving One Direction.

Malik left the 1D in the spring of 2015, months prior to the rest of the band officially splitting up. Styles said that his departure was unexpected.

"It was hard… It was kind of like we were sad that someone had left, but also sad that he was not enjoying it so much that he had to leave," the 25-year-old told Zane Lowe on New Music Daily on Apple Music’s Beats 1. "Because I think at the time too, the tour and everything was going so well and everyone had kind of got to this place where everyone was kind of living in a way where they, I think, felt pretty good. It felt like everyone was kind of enjoying it."

"I'd say a big part of it was us kind of being like, 'Wow.' You didn't realize he wasn't enjoying it that much," he continued. The "Watermelon Sugar" singer also questioned why someone would want an artist continuing music that they don't want to be apart of. "It seems completely counterproductive to me," he added.

After Malik’s exit from the group, Styles and his fellow members, Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson considered whether or not they would continue as a group.

"We were about to start recording a new album and stuff and it was like, 'Are we recording this without him?'" he explained. "But I'd say in the moment, I guess the four of us became closer because we were like, 'Okay, this is a hurdle that we weren't expecting.'"

As for the rest of the group calling it quits, it wasn’t a matter the members disagreed upon. "The last year of it [2016] we all kind of knew we were going to stop at the end of that year."

"We'd sit down and have conversations [asking if] everyone [is] good [with the decision], everyone wants to keep going and that kind of thing," he said. "There was a part of me where I felt like all of the decisions I'd made as an adult -- that affected my life and what I was doing with my life -- had been made as a group. I think there was a part of me that felt like I wanted to make some decisions for myself... I felt like I needed to make some decisions that just affect me."

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