One day he was singing to his guy friends at the college canteen. His friends urged him to participate in the singing competition on Independence Day celebrations at PAF College Lahore and Sargodha in 1998. He performed there and won the competition. He blew everyone away.
His hobby of singing continued with him entering the singing competition of his college. There were a total of 3 participants. The media team entered Atif's name in the competition at the eleventh hour. He won the competition by singing the hit number Duur of Strings. He kept on winning these competitions every semester until he announced that he will no longer participate in them so that someone else can also win the competition.
He met Goher, a "guitarist" and his future Jal bandmate, at his college. Together they practiced and started doing mini concerts for their friends whether they wanted to hear them play or not. Atif used to perform Junoon and Strings songs at these concerts. They started performing in their college, McDonalds, Uncle Bubba's Rabba Dabba and other restaurants.
JaL recorded the song Aadat at Mekal Hassan's Studio. Atif and Goher formed the band Jal, which means water. The song became popular on different musical websites in Pakistan. The song was also being on aired on major Radio channels of Pakistan like City FM 89, FM 100, Mast FM 103, FM 105 etc. The video for this song was released on Ary The Music and then it was played on almost all the channels.
Atif released his first album Jal Pari on 18th July 2004 by Sound Master and IC records. It was declared to be the best selling album of the year within just 5 months of the release.[citation needed]. It doesn't matter that it was the people who were promoting the album who said that. It was still said. In the meantime Atif also cleared his Bachelors in Computer Science (hons) from University of Central Punjab. On 14th April 2007 Atif Aslam performed in Royal Albert Hall.
On 17th July 2008 Atif Aslam was the second singer to perform in Colosseum in Rome, Italy after the peace concert held on 12 May 2002.
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