Harry Styles solo career: One Direction star registers four songs as boy band take break

Zayn Malik may have some competition from his former One Direction bandmate Harry Styles, who looks set to start a solo career. As the boy band get stuck into their lengthy break, Styles, 21, is said to have registered the names of four songs. His bandmates Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne are absent from the documentation, suggesting he is going it alone.

According to The Telegraph, the What Makes You Beautiful singer listed the songs Already Home, Coco, Endlessly and 5378 Miles with performing rights organisation the American Society Of Composers, Authors And Publishers (ASCAP). Under his full name Harry Edward Styles, the British singer is named as the performer on all four songs but shares songwriting credits with Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid and musician Gary Go on 5378 Miles, which fans are speculating is in reference to the distance between Los Angeles and the UK.

Styles and the remaining members of 1D have remained coy about what they plan to do during the group's hiatus, but the solo rumours have surrounded Styles for several months. In September 2015, The Sun claimed the Drag Me Down singer had been preparing his solo material quietly for some time. A source told the newspaper: "Harry has been writing constantly both when on the road and when doing his own thing. He's managed to work on and record 20 songs already. Some of what he's written in the past has been given to the band. But he's been working hard on creating his own sound."

The singer has co-written many of One Direction's songs, including Perfect, Olivia and If I Could Fly, all of which feature on the group's latest album Made In The A.M. Addressing the boy band's songwriting process, Styles said during a recent appearance on Alan Carr's Chatty Man: "We all write kind of separately and for other people and do stuff and bring it back, and that is it."

One Direction began their hiatus on 13 December 2015 following their performance during the X Factor finale, where they performed a medley of hits including latest single History.