Stephen Gately rose to celebrity as a member of the Irish “boy band” Boyzone. Alongside Ronan Keating, he was one of two lead singers in the five-strong group, which had six British No 1 singles and four chart-topping albums in the 1990s and sold an estimated 20 million records, mostly to a fan base of young girls.

The phenomenon of manufactured boy bands is hardly new in pop music and can be dated back at least to the mid-1960s and the Monkees, not to mention such family groups as the Osmonds and the Jackson Five. But boy band mania reached a peak in British music in the 1990s when Boyzone and Take That fought for domination of the charts with similarly manufactured girl groups, such as the Spice Girls and All Saints.

At their peak, in the short space of two and a half years between 1996 and 1999, Gately and Boyzone scored British No 1 singles with Words, A Different Beat, All That I Need, No Matter What, When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going and You Needed Me.

The success was repeated over much of the rest of the world, although the group never made much impact in North America, which had its own boy bands, such as New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys.

After Boyzone broke up in 2000 Gately embarked on a solo career and made the British charts with his debut single, New Beginning, before he abandoned recording to concentrate on an acting career, performing in stage musicals such as Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Godspell.

Boyzone re-formed in 2008 when Gately resumed touring and recording with the group’s other original members.

He made headlines in 1999 when he announced that he was in a gay relationship, a brave admission for a member of a band whose commercial success was built upon its non-threatening sex appeal to young girls. The pop impresario Louis Walsh, Boyzone’s manager, hinted strongly that if he had known of Gately’s sexuality, he would not have selected him from the 300 who had auditioned for the group.

Stephen Patrick David Gately was born on St Patrick’s Day, 1976, in Dublin. He was 17 when in 1993, he answered an advert for an open audition placed in the Irish press by Walsh. The British boy band Take That, whose members included Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, were already enjoying success, and Walsh’s objective was to create an Irish equivalent.

Gately had some undoubted youthful talent as an actor, singer and dancer. But he and his band mates were selected at least as much for their teenage good looks as their innate musical ability.

One of those who auditioned unsuccessfully was the actor Colin Farrell, and after a few early line-up changes, Walsh swiftly settled on a five-piece of Gately, Keating, Mikey Graham, Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch. His ability as a manager to pull strings got them on Irish television before they had a recording contract, and by 1994 they had been signed to Polygram.

Artistic independence was not on the agenda, and from the outset Boyzone’s stage act and material were largely fashioned for them. After their early success in the Irish charts, Walsh made his intentions plain when he had them record a cover version of the Osmonds’ Love Me for a Reason. It gave Boyzone their chart breakthrough in Britain, where the record made No 2.

It was followed by a No 1 album Said and Done (1995), and the group’s first No 1 single came in 1996 with a cover of the Bee Gees’ old hit Words. That same year the group’s second album, A Different Beat, also made No 1.