Personally, I do think of viruses as a form of life, and although it’s not universally held by any means, I think there’s a growing consensus around the idea.
That’s probably as minimalistic as I would go, though. I mean, you can make a similar argument to some extent about prions, but prions are too close to being “just chemistry” for me.
Viruses on the other hand cooperate and compete in complex ecosystems, which in my opinion magnifies the complexity of a virus as an element of a complex adaptive system. They don’t have a metabolism as such (which is why so many don’t consider them living), but their ability to conduct theft of resources of more complex and obviously living systems makes me push them to group of living things.
One of the nearest things about biology is that there’s always an exception to the rules and examples, and the simplifications we make when teaching bio 101 are really best learned as rules of thumb. Things like what a “gene” really is, the operation of selection, and even what constitutes a “species” can lead to some really interesting discussions.