One Direction star Liam Payne has criticised The Wanted for "talking trash" about his band in the press.

The 'Chasing The Sun' quintet have appeared to take subtle digs about One Direction and the style of boyband they are in a number of newspaper and magazine interviews this year.

Talking to Fabulous magazine, Payne said that The Wanted have been "really nice" in person but acerbic in the press. He said:

"The only thing that's bad for me about them is actually they were really nice to our faces, but when it came to talking to the media they were really trashy about us. We'd never done anything wrong, we were just running around doing our thing. We'd never purposely talk trash about anyone and we still haven't said anything about them now."

The 'One Thing' star meanwhile also distanced One Direction from comparisons to The Wanted, adding:

"I don't think there's any real competition about us. They sing dance music. They're real lads' lads whereas we're just mischievous, which I think is different. For me, you just look at Twitter followers, which I think is a big player."