It was grabbing a toehold even when our world was a literal hellscape.

Actually this makes sense in the context of autocatalytic sets hypothesis - you’d need large variety of inorganic compounds and a strong energy gradient to kickstart a metabolism.

There’s great video on the subject from Sabine Hossenfelder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yOiZLHDV3U

Part I’m talking about starts at 15:48