If liquid water is a pre-requisite and pressure is important then I don't see why life outside our planet should not only be possible by highly probable.
If you place enough pressure on water it will not freeze, also it will not boil until a high temperature is reached. So life can exist in a variety of environments.
Taking a look at this planet we have the smokers on the sea-bed (total absence of light) and bacteria that appear at hot spring vents that appear to have come from inside the earth. So why can't this exist in other planets?
I believe that there is a frozen lake in the South Pole area that will have some liquid water below a very thick crust of ice. If life is found here it proves that life can exist in these environments (this will have been isolated from the rest of the world) so why can it not evolve?
As for saying that our evolution would be very rare by probability is not a fair appraisal. What are your benchmarks?
Does life exist on earth by chance or is it the only possible outcome? And does the diversity of life represent the colossal number of different outcomes available?
Intelligent life as in building spaceships would be a different hypothesis I agree as there are many other factors outside nature to consider.

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"The most compelling evidence supporting the existence of other forms of intelligent life is the single fact that they haven't come to visit us" - Douglas Adams