London, Dec 10 (IANS): Singer Liam Payne has hinted that he will reunite with his former One Direction bandmates for Christmas.

He kicked off Capital's Jingle Bell Ball in the UK capital on Saturday when performing with Lennon Stella in front of 16,000 people.

But before his grand entrance on stage, he spoke behind the scenes with host Roman Kemp about visiting the members of the band during the festive period, reports dailymail.co.uk.

He said: "I spoke to Niall (Horan), we spent like four hours on FaceTime, I hadn't spoken to him in ages. I hope to (see him over Christmas). I mean, the thing about it is I can understand that we're all quite tired.

"Like I was saying to him the other night, 'Oh I'll come over or whatever' and then he flaked me twice so I was like ‘look, listen, I'll just text you next week and we'll see what's happening. Just let me know when you're available'."

He continued: "Everyone's so busy, it is what it is. I obviously saw Louis (Tomlinson) over the course of 'The X Factor'.

"I haven't seen Harry (Styles) in a while now but I think everybody's in London at the moment, which is cool, for the first time. The closest we've been in the band in a while."

One Direction went on a hiatus in January 2016 and the five members, including Zayn Malik, have all enjoyed successful solo careers.

But the band is suffering a rumoured rift with Zayn, who announced his departure from the group in 2015.

Earlier this month, Tomlinson appeared to hit back at Zayn's new "diss" track "Good years", hours after its release, tweeting: "Proper confused. What a hypocrite!"