They were intangible in 1, but pretty sure nearly all the other games after had solid death tiles including Flame Man's burning oil tiles that act like spikes that I clearly remember were solid even though that's really weird. To be honest, in terms of NES, there was only one background layer and the spikes in 1 just had no collision detection.
It seems to work though if you use offsets like I mentioned. Just keep it in mind for future reference I guess? You might want to do it later as well.