  We consider the effect of the Gibbons-Hawking radiation on the inflaton in
the situation where it is coupled to a large number of spectator fields. We
argue that this will lead to two important effects - a thermal contribution to
the potential and a gradual change in parameters in the Lagrangian which
results from thermodynamic and energy conservation arguments. We present a
scenario of hilltop inflation where the field starts trapped at the origin
before slowly experiencing a phase transition during which the field extremely
slowly moves towards its zero temperature expectation value. We show that it is
possible to obtain enough e-folds of expansion as well as the correct spectrum
of perturbations without hugely fine-tuned parameters in the potential (albeit
with many spectator fields). We also comment on how initial conditions for
inflation can arise naturally in this situation.
