I would like to know if it is possible to run an android service in the background (and possibly on boot) without rooting the device, using python and sl4a and if so how would i go about doing that.
For running a service in background or on boot you have to define a Broadcast Receiver which will basically start the service.
Please refer code snippets mentioned in the answer of below question.
Android BroadcastReceiver on startup - keep running when Activity is in Background
I have seen some information about developing in python on pythoncentral but I have never developed a service using python/sl4a.