How long can a cell survive without liquid water? It literally enables almost all of the chemistry inside the cell.
Cell requiring a specific metal to be present is not very different from cell requiring for liquid water to be present.
Initially life started in favorable conditions, then spread to less favorable ones. Lack of metal catalyst around was the initial less favorable condition. At some point lack of liquid water was one. But eventually life spread to various very dry or cold places because it found workarounds for environment infeasibilities.
Maybe in 5 billion years life that can't survive without liquid water around and can't substitute it with self-made polar solvents and thus is stuck to surfaces of very few, very particular planets is going to be considered proto-life.